Marjorie Taylor Greene vows to defund Jack Smith: After weeks of attempting to impeach numerous top administration officials, the Georgia congresswoman is pushing to defund the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Marjorie Taylor Greene to the Rescue?
Republicans in Congress have had a variety of reactions to the news that Donald Trump had been indicted on 37 counts, including Espionage Act violations. There were many calls that the indictment represents a “two-tiered system of justice,” and also cries of double standards.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) drew laughs Monday for telling reporters that the photo from the indictment of boxes of classified documents piled up in a bathroom of Mar-a-Lago wasn’t concerning, because “a bathroom door locks.”
Not to be outdone, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday vowed to pull money away from the office of the prosecutor who indicted the former president.
“This morning, I’m writing an appropriations rider to DEFUND Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office and entire investigation,” Greene said on Twitter. “I will not vote for ANY appropriations bill to fund the weaponization of government…I hope every one of my Republican colleagues will join me.”
It seems likely that, like so many other proposals by Greene, this one is just for show, it won’t get the support of anything close to a majority in Congress, and it won’t happen the way Greene wants. And even if Congress did somehow defund Smith’s office through the appropriations process, Trump is still under federal indictment, and that would not go away. He would likely merely be prosecuted by some different branch of the Justice Department.
Would Greene then push to defund the FBI or the Justice Department, as has been suggested by some in the right in recent months? She could, but a vast bipartisan majority appears to see the political peril, not to mention the numerous logistical questions, that would go with the lack of a Justice Department and FBI.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has endorsed Greene’s proposal, as has Rep. George Santos (R-NY), who is himself under federal indictment, and likely has even more self-interested reasons to be upset with the Justice Department than Trump does. Gaetz, for his part, has had his own run-ins with the Justice Department.
Another Congressman, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), had hinted at a similar idea in a Newsmax interview earlier this week.
“For the Department of Justice to use this kind of tactic—we’ve seen it time and time again and I think it will continue until we get their attention,” Burchett said in the interview, shortly after Trump was indicted. “We need to bring them down before the committee, and if not we need to at some point talk about cutting their funding. I’m beating a dead horse but that’s really what needs to happen because this group is out of control, they’re rogue.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) also threatened to “look at the appropriation process and limit funds going to some of these agencies, particularly the ones who are engaged in the most egregious behavior.”
And Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) had tweeted last Friday that “we ought to defund and dismantle the DOJ…. Congress can and should hold the Biden DOJ accountable by defunding their efforts during the appropriations process, executing the Holman Rule to remove and defund corrupt officials, and conducting oversight on its baseless investigations.”
The push recalls a proposal floated in Congress to defund Robert Mueller’s investigation, during Trump’s presidency. The Congressman with that idea, back in 2017? Rep. Ron DeSantis, then a Florida representative and now governor of Florida and a presidential candidate.
However, the proposal — which wouldn’t have completely defunded the Mueller probe, but rather would have put a time limit on it — was not taken up by the then-House leadership. The then-Acting Attorney General, Matthew Whitaker, also floated a similar defunding, but that never happened either, while the White House said at the end of 2017 that the White House was not considering defunding the Mueller probe, as Steve Bannon had suggested around the same time.
Author Expertise and Experience:
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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