Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) may have taken the first shot but he is now portraying himself as the real victim.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed a lawsuit against Jordan after he demanded that Bragg appear before the House Judiciary Committee, even though Congress has no oversight over his office.
Bragg said in the filing that Jordan and the Committee launched an “unconstitutional” campaign to “intimate and attack” the D.A.'s office after former President Donald Trump was indicted.
"…Rather than allowing the criminal process to proceed in the ordinary course, Chairman Jordan and the Committee are participating in a campaign of intimidation, retaliation, and obstruction," Bragg writes in the suit.
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"First, they indict a president for no crime. Then, they sue to block congressional oversight when we ask questions about the federal funds they say they used to do it," Jordan wrote in response to the lawsuit.
The "they" Jordan refers to wasn't called to testify before his committee. The grand jury voted on the indictment, not Bragg. At the same time, because the case involves a secret grand jury, Bragg couldn't tell Jordan anything anyway.
By law, no information can be revealed about the grand jury by lawyers or jurors. Jordan went to law school at the Capital University Law School, but has never actually practiced law.
The "federal funds" that Jordan is referring to is the cash that the state government gets as a whole and what is spent by the D.A.s office.
Bragg's general counsel, Leslie Dubeck, said last week that just $5,000 in federal funds was spent on the case involving the Trump Org. and Donald Trump between Oct. 2019 and Aug. 2021. Most of that, they said, went to Supreme Court litigation, the right-leaning Washington Times quoted. None of the money used in the Trump case came from the federal grants probe and the 2023 fiscal year budget shows just $2 million from Washington.
The office budget for all D.A.'s and prosecutors totals $458.9 million in 2021, the New York government budget says.
