State of the Union: Interview With Rep. James Comer (R-KY)
Interview
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Well, what the DA is trying to say is what you just quoted. He said, stay out of local investigations.
The problem with that is, this is not a local investigation. This is a federal investigation. He's investigating a presidential candidate, not to mention former president of the United States, for a federal election crime.
That has no business being litigated in a local district attorney's office.
And when he says he's not going to cooperate with Congress, unfortunately for Mr. Bragg, he doesn't have the luxury of determining whether or not he can comply with congressional requests, because he crossed over two levels of government from the local level to the federal level to try to prosecute something that, clearly, if there was a reason for prosecution, it should be done by the Department of Justice on the federal level.
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Even at that, look, let's just be honest here.
I mean, this is about politics. This is a presidential candidate. When you look at what we believe the role of the Manhattan DA should be is to fight crime. I mean, that's one of the biggest issues in New York. We saw that in the midterm elections last November.
Voters overwhelmingly rejected many Democrat candidates because of the crime issue. We have a crime crisis in many of our cities. And we're trying to do something about that in the House of Representatives. And one of the reasons we believe we have high crime rates in certain parts of America is because we have prosecutors that are soft on crime.
And we believe that our tax dollars -- and that's where I come in with the House Oversight -- we believe tax dollars would be better spent prosecuting local criminals. That's what a DA is supposed to do.
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Look, well, is this a business crime? We're talking about a federal election crime here, Jake. This is a federal election crime.
The Manhattan DA does not write federal electoral law.
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Congress writes federal election law.
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That was a U.S. attorney that prosecuted.
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We're talking about a local attorney.
And the problem -- and, look, if you open a can of worms here, here's what's going to happen. You're going to have county attorneys in red areas, in parts of Kentucky, rural Kentucky, where I am, that are going to start trying to overreach into the federal election law.
This is something that, if it needs to be investigated or prosecuted, it should be done on the federal level by the Department of Justice. This is a presidential candidate. One frustration Republicans have in Congress is that we keep having interference in our elections. I know that the Democrats complained about that, rightfully so, when James Comey just a few weeks or a few days before the presidential election in 2016 said that Hillary was being investigated for mishandling e- mails.
Look, that shouldn't have happened. That shouldn't have happened. And we keep having stuff like this happen in our elections. We just want the government out of our elections. We don't believe tax dollars should be spent for this. We believe this is a political stunt by Mr. Bragg.
We believe the statute of limitations has expired on all of this stuff.
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Clearly, if there's something that rises to criminal level, then -- then that should be done on the federal level.
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Yes.
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Well, we believe that he should come explain to us exactly what he's investigating, because, at the end of the day, this is a presidential candidate.
This is the, for better or worse, leading contender for the Republican nomination of the presidential election next year, as well as a former president of the United States. It's unprecedented for a local district attorney to investigate things that we believe the statute of limitations expired years ago.
Now, look, if the special counsel that's looking into this wants to do something, if the Department of Justice wants to do something, then -- then they probably, for better or worse, have the ability to do that. This is a local DA. We believe the local DAs need to be focused on business crimes, on burglary, on thefts, on -- on carjackings and all the things that we see happening in these big cities that are that -- are creating a crime crisis in America.
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Again, this is a local investigation.
It's not a sincere argument to say it's a local investigation, when you're investigating a presidential candidate and a former president of the United States. Again we believe that this should be done on the federal level. We don't believe this is a good use of tax dollars.
And if Mr. Bragg wants to come in and explain to us what he what he's doing, and he makes a good explanation, he makes a good argument and we see that we're in an area where we shouldn't belong, such as the Republicans -- some of the Republican senators say, then we will back off.
But we're sick and tired of meddling in federal elections. And I don't believe that Bragg would be doing this if Donald Trump were not running for president, and that's something that we would like to ask Mr. Bragg as well.
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Would you be doing this if he weren't a declared candidate for president -- for president of the United States? If so, if this is the reason you're doing it, then this is a political investigation, and we, again, desperately want to keep the Department of Justice from meddling in presidential elections.
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Well, that will be up to Jim Jordan.
I mean, he's the lead investigator in this particular situation. I come in as oversight because this deals with unnecessary use of tax dollars. Chairman Steele is head of House administration. He's in charge of
elections. That's why the three of us were the three that that signed the letter. But Jim Jordan is the -- is the lead. And he would be the one to answer that question.
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Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
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Thanks for having me, Jake.
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