Reacting to a Donald Trump screed about his impending indictment by the Department of Justice, MSNBC political analysts scoffed at the former president's belief that GOP lawmakers can intercede on his behalf to keep him from being indicted.
After the former president's lawyers received a DOJ notice memorializing that their client is the target of an investigation into his handling of classified materials after leaving office, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to rage, "No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong.”
He then added, "REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS MUST MAKE THIS THEIR # 1 ISSUE!!!”
As MSNBC's Steve Benen noted, Trump-supporting lawmakers can make threats but they have no power over stopping special counsel Jack Smith's endeavors.
Pointing out "Trump genuinely seems to believe that congressional Republicans have a role to play in his intensifying legal troubles," he recalled a previous letter sent by GOP lawmakers in April, who demanded a "'legislative solution," to be approved by Congress, is 'required' to prevent federal prosecutors from pursuing the case further."
That, he notes, never came to pass.
As for the former president's latest demands that GOP lawmakers stand between him and the DOJ, Benen wrote, "I honestly don’t know what he expects congressional Republicans to do. Congress has no control over who is or isn’t indicted. It’s possible that Trump has imagined a scenario in which lawmakers pass a bill to defund the special counsel’s office, thereby derailing the investigation, but even if the GOP-led House were to take up such a measure, it obviously couldn’t pass the Democratic-led Senate or receive President Joe Biden’s signature."
"What we’re seeing, in other words, is a desperate criminal suspect scrambling to find someone, anyone, who can help rescue him from a crisis of his own making," he added. "Whether Trump understands this or not, his pleas won’t work."
You can read his whole piece here.
