House Speaker Kevin MCCarthy's decision on Saturday morning to announce a blatant attempt to interfere with investigations into possible criminal activities committed by Donald Trump is nothing less than assisting the former president in once again inciting violence reminiscent of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
As MSNBC political analyst Hayes Brown wrote, the California Republican's directive to GOP House committee heads to begin investigating the Trump investigators only heightened the probability of pro-Trump extremists hitting the streets after the former president called for protests after claiming he will be arrested on Tuesday.
After Trump wrote his all-cap screed early Saturday morning, McCarthy joined the fray by tweeting, "I’m directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions,” which Brown described as "clearly a political threat in the guise of apolitical concern-trolling."
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Joining historian Michael Beschloss, who called the House speaker's attempt to interfere with criminal investigations "disgraceful," Brown wrote, "McCarthy's wading into an ongoing criminal investigation is bad enough. But the California Republican added a bit of extra spice to try to keep up the façade that he’s just doing his job as speaker."
As Brown notes, McCarthy's directive is an empty threat with the analyst writing that federal funding to local prosecutors' offices are negligible, and then explaining, "McCarthy has plenty of staff who could have told him that, but that’s not the point. The point is that McCarthy clearly thought that he had to come out in support of Trump at this stage. And he’s not above using his role as leader of the House as a weapon in his arsenal."
Noting McCarthy's previous waffling on Trump's culpability for the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, Brown wrote, "With Saturday’s tweet, though, McCarthy seems to be moving on from being an accessory after the fact and toward aiding and abetting."
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