On Thursday night, in one of the most dramatic abuses in the history of the Justice Department, Donald Trump successfully orchestrated the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, one of his prominent political enemies. Many congressional Democrats recognized the seriousness of the president’s scandalous move.
Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, for example, argued via Bluesky, “We aren’t on a slippery slope to a constitutional crisis. We are in the crisis. Time for leaders — political leaders, business leaders, civic leaders — to pick a side: democracy or autocracy?”
Some of his Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill did not exactly rise to the occasion. NBC News rounded up a sampling of congressional GOP reactions:
Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, posted: ‘Good to see the DOJ treating lying to Congress as a serious matter. I guess Comey’s ‘Higher Calling’ wasn’t to the Constitution or the laws of the United States.’ Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said, ‘James Comey wrongly wielded weaponized bureaucracy and lawfare to derail a duly elected President.’ ‘Russiagate was a complete hoax, and those that perpetrated this should face justice. No one is above the law,’ Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., wrote in a post.
It’s tempting to remind congressional Republicans that nearly every prosecutor who evaluated the case against Comey — including a Trump-nominated U.S. attorney and a Trump-appointed special counsel — agreed that there was no point in pursuing this case. Similarly, I’d love to explain once again that Trump’s Russia scandal was not a “hoax,” no matter how many times he and his allies pretend otherwise.
But of even greater interest right now is a reaction to the latest developments from Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota.
Asked on CNN about the president weaponizing the Justice Department to target his political enemies, Rounds said he was content to “let the courts sort this out.” He similarly suggested that the public probably doesn’t much care about Trump shattering the country’s democratic norms.
And when Manu Raju asked specifically about the president directing the attorney general to go after his political opponents, the senator, after again punting the issue to the courts, replied, “I think we need to stay in our lane right now, and our lane is doing our job.”
There are some senators who are relatively new to the institution and have little experience in governing or policymaking, and it would be easy to understand how they might be confused about what does and does not fall under the purview of senators.
But Rounds isn’t one of them. The South Dakotan is not a rookie: After a decade in the state legislature, Rounds served eight years as a governor, and he’s been in the Senate for more than a decade. He knows how government works.
So the senator must realize that Congress has oversight responsibilities over the executive branch. Indeed, both the House and Senate have whole committees that are focused almost exclusively on oversight.
Lawmakers have launched investigations and held hearings into White House controversies for centuries.
When a president corrupts the criminal justice system and Congress finds out about it, this is absolutely in lawmakers’ “lane.”
If Rounds doesn’t want to bother with Trump’s scandals because he and the president are Republicans, he can say so. But to pretend that presidential abuses are none of Congress’ business is ridiculous.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
