Dem
51
GOP
49
Republicans in the House are absolutely desperate to find some Democrat they can make pay for the crimes of Donald Trump. They may not say it openly, but even the Trumpers know full well he's a sleazeball and a convicted felon. They also know that a lot of voters know it, too. And so, the corrective is to find a high-profile Democrat and show the world that person is also a sleazeball and a criminal. This will theoretically even the score.
Thus far, the House Republican Conference has not had much luck on this front. They impeached DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and... it was forgotten 5 minutes after the Senate pencil-whipped the matter right into the trash bin. House Republicans played some small role in getting Hunter Biden tried criminally, but even though he was convicted, the "Biden crime family" bit hasn't stuck to Joe Biden with anyone except the True Believers.
The latest target, of course, is AG Merrick Garland. The House demanded that he turn over tapes from Special Counsel Robert Hur's investigation of the President, and Garland refused. The House then voted to hold him in contempt, and referred the matter to the DoJ for prosecution. The DoJ declined. What's a partisan who is only interested in performative politics supposed to do?
Well, the answer is that some Republicans have dusted off an idea that got a fair bit of play from Democratic commentators when Donald Trump was in office. They want to order the sergeant-at-arms of the House to toddle over to the DoJ's headquarters (a mere 1.3 miles from the Capitol), arrest Garland, and drag him to the House chamber to face his reckoning. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) floated the idea last week, and Rep. Anna Paulina Loony... er, Luna (R-FL) promised yesterday that she will force a vote on the matter.
There are all kinds of problems here. The first is logistics. Garland has a security detail, and if the sergeant-at-arms shows up to arrest the AG under dubious pretenses, who knows how that will play out. It's also not clear where prisoner Garland would be held, once detained, nor what his rights would be as a prisoner. The second problem is that the base might eat up this sort of red meat, but to everyone else it would make the GOP look like the Banana Republican Party, which would cost them votes. The third problem is that once you set a precedent, you are inviting the other side to return the favor. Imagine how many Trump administration officials could plausibly have been arrested from 2017 to 2021, had this power been first established by Republicans during, say, the Newt Gingrich years.
It is very probable that the Luna vote, once it is called, will fail for these reasons (and probably more). The Mayorkas impeachment cleared the bar by a single vote, and one has to assume there would be even more defectors in this case. Although, with the Party of Trump, you can never be sure. (Z)