Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg
Photo:
peter foley/Shutterstock
the Beltway press corps and Democrats don’t agree on much, but they do all want Mr. Trump to dominate the nation’s political news and conversation. The puzzle is why House Republicans seem eager to fall into this trap by investigating Manhattan District Attorney
Alvin Bragg’s
potential prosecution of Mr. Trump.
We’ve said that Mr. Bragg’s indictment of the former President would be misguided and is likely to take U.S. politics into a deeper polarized hole. Perhaps the DA is rethinking this himself, as he delayed his grand jury’s consideration of more evidence until Monday at the earliest. Perhaps cooler heads are warning him that bringing what the public evidence suggests is a weak case will forever mark his career. And what if he loses in court?
But it’s also true that Democrats are enjoying this spectacle because they want Mr. Trump to be the main issue between now and November 2024. They believe Mr. Trump is the easiest Republican for President Biden to beat, and they know no one motivates Democratic voters more than the man from Mar-a-Lago. They’re all too happy to see America humiliated by a mug shot shared around the world if it helps them win the election.
Mr. Trump wants to avoid indictment, but he won’t shrink from his appointed dramatic role if he is. He’ll portray himself as a victim, and one news report says he has told aides that he wants to be handcuffed if arrested. He will want his voters to see him persecuted. This will keep the presidential campaign focused on him and his trial, instead of having a Republican debate about his 2020 support for Covid shutdowns, his losing electoral record since 2016, and the chaotic governance of his Presidency.
Meantime, Democrats couldn’t be happier that House Republicans are helping them in their Trump obsession by saying the GOP plans to investigate Mr. Bragg and haul him up before Congress. This is a loser’s game. Mr. Bragg has said he won’t cooperate, and he has the law on his side.
His local police power is protected from federal intrusion as part of the Constitution’s separation of powers. If he refuses a House subpoena, he is likely to win in court if Republicans try to compel him. Even if he showed up at a House hearing, Mr. Bragg could rightly refuse to comment, as any federal or state prosecutor would, because doing so could jeopardize his investigation. He’s unlikely to comply with document requests for the same reason.
As for the politics, House Republicans are hurting their own cause. The press corps and Democrats want to talk about Mr. Trump all the time, and Republicans are giving them more fodder to do so. It’s one thing to denounce Mr. Bragg’s prosecution as weak and unjust. It’s another to look like defending Mr. Trump is the new majority’s main preoccupation.
House Republicans will soon vote on a promising energy reform that could put some moderate Democrats on the spot. But good luck getting anyone to notice as Mr. Trump’s case dominates the airwaves. To have any leverage with Mr. Biden in debt-ceiling talks, House Republicans need to unify behind and pass a budget resolution. Yet they’ve made no progress on doing so, as they hit the cable shows to talk about Mr. Trump 24 hours a day.
Republicans are foolish to feed the Trump maw with a campaign against Mr. Bragg that exceeds their power and has no chance of success.
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Appeared in the March 24, 2023, print edition as ‘Republicans Take the Bragg Bait.’
