Jim Jordan gets bad news from the Justice Department

You're looking at the legal collapse, which is why Glenn, the Department of Justice, sent a letter to Jim Jordan informing him that he will not hand over documents related to the ongoing investigation into Joe Biden's handling of classified documents, now that you mentioned in a previous episode. that we had, that there was no way this was going to happen, so you were right about that, why did the

justice

department

finally come back and say no? Yeah, I think the

justice

department

appropriately said to Jim Jordan, listen, we have ongoing criminal potential. criminal investigation not only do we have a special prosecutor, once a special prosecutor is appointed, there are some special rules and procedures that go into effect and are in part designed to protect the integrity and secrecy of the special prosecutor's investigation, but, In essence, you know the The same principle applies to any ongoing criminal investigation and that is that the Department of Justice keeps its investigative letters very secretive and, frankly, the last thing they want to do is start handing out the details of a criminal investigation ongoing to members of Congress because at that point you really can't guarantee or guarantee the integrity of the investigation, you can't guarantee that things can't or won't start to leak through members of Congress or their staff, and you know, I know, the members.

Congress will say no, well, we have security clearances, we can trust them, say some of the insurrectionists currently serving in Congress, so I'm not entirely convinced that they're all trustworthy, but I think in this case the Department of Justice sent a letter. to Jim Jordan saying that he knows, thank you for his request, his interest and his desire to conduct oversight, but we are going to preserve the integrity of the ongoing investigation. Now, what did Jim Jordan intend to do with these documents? Well, that's a mystery because it's Jim Jordan, right, this was the guy who couldn't answer the question when he was asked: Did you talk to Donald Trump on the morning of the Insurrection?

He did it all night. I don't remember, I don't know, I can't and then. It later emerged that his own phone calls, his own phone records showed that he spoke to Donald Trump for a full 10 minutes. Sorry, Jim Jordan can't be trusted, so what did he want to do well in a normal world? applying the kind of normal rules of congressional convention, wants to do oversight that is part of the legislative branch's responsibility to see if, for example, there is any misconduct in the Justice Department or to see if legislation may be necessary regarding this whole classified documents debacle.

I find it extremely telling that Jim Jordan is apparently not interested in the documents, the crimes that Donald Trump committed or the classified documents, let's call them missteps that Mike Pence committed, which seem more closely aligned with the missteps. that Joe Biden probably didn't commit any crimes there by either of those two men, but that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about Jim Jordan's intent, his goal, his mission, you know, let's call it what it is, try to find. Ways to dirty Joe Biden and exploit that information for Jordan and the Republicans' political advantage call me cynical, but that is my opinion, it is not the goal of these congressional investigations, ultimately, simply to inform the justice department as at least the goal of the January 6 committee. in part was to decide whether or not they would ultimately send a criminal referral to the Department of Justice, they ultimately made the decision to send a criminal referral to the Department of Justice against Donald Trump, but if the Department of Justice is already handling this handling issue of classified documents by Biden, what would the objective of this cooperation be other than, of course, for Jim Jordan to simply turn this into a circus?

Yes, it is to the political advantage of Republicans and the political disadvantage of Joe Biden and Democrats in general, at least in my opinion, but even the J6 committee primarily had to have a legislative purpose in conducting the hearings that it did. out the j6 committee and that was an issue that was litigated in court. The people who were resisting the j6 committee subpoenas came in and said, "Wait a minute, this is really Congress trying to co-opt the Justice Department's kind of criminal jurisdiction and therefore we shouldn't have to comply with these subpoenas and the j6 committee defended it legitimately in my opinion and, more importantly, in the opinion of the judges who had to rule on this issue who defended it by saying no, we have a legislative purpose, we need to think carefully about what kind of legislation we can implement so that no future president can try to overthrow our democracy or can try to stop the peaceful transfer of power or the counting of the Electoral College votes, secondly, your reason was: you know we need to see if there are criminal references that are appropriate that arise from this legislative investigation that we are carrying out so routinely, the legislative purpose is more or less the main one.

The reason you carry them out and the fact that you can find evidence of the crime and then refer that crime to the Department of Justice for further investigation and prosecution is supposed to be a secondary goal of a congressional investigation and of course , That's not the objective. In this case, the point is to try to think of Joe Biden just to please the Jim Jordans of the world for a second, what would be the possible point of investigating Joe Biden's handling of these documents, but it does not succeed, nor Pence, like in what world would he do it?

Would it be appropriate what is the reason that Jim Jordan is trying to bring to light here to choose to focus all of these resources against Biden but not against Donald Trump, who did something to an extent that was 10 times worse in terms of amount of documents and Furthermore, not to mention the illegal retention of these documents, the withholding of these documents afterward and the obstruction efforts of the Department of Justice to recover them or Mike Pence, who did more or less the same as Joe Biden in terms of having them and then immediately contact the National Archives to retrieve them I hate wearing my Jim Jordan hat because you know I don't know what I might catch.

I'd definitely have to rub my scalp once he took it off, but here's if I'm going to make Jim Jordan's argument. Here's how it would happen: Congress has constitutional oversight authority over the executive branch, as best they can, and they always hold oversight hearings to try to be a check and balance on potential overreach or abuse of the executive branch, so that Joe Biden is the president, etc. He is the head of the executive branch and because Congress has the responsibility of overseeing the executive branch, you could certainly say that that is what we are doing, we want to make sure that whatever it is that you know caused the president of the United States in his previous mandate. ability to have classified documents, we want to implement some safeguards, perhaps even some legislation regarding how classified materials should be handled legally, not just by practice or custom, and you know that Mike Pence is no longer part of the executive branch, Donald Trump is no longer part of the executive branch, so our Oversight Authority extends to Joe Biden at this time again.

I'm taking my hat off and I need to keep it up. I don't believe what I just said, but I think that's how Jim Jordan would do it. Spin it if you were ever willing to answer a direct question which every time you see him interviewed is not something you are willing to do, but wouldn't this be applicable because all of this happened while Joe Biden was vice president? There's some kind of cut where, even though it's the same person that he was in his capacity as vice president, this is him in his capacity as president, they're not the same for all intents and purposes, you just cut eloquently, um, and succinctly. .

Write down the argument I tried to make when I had my Jim Jordan hat on. You're absolutely right because you know that apparently Joe Biden reportedly came into possession of these documents in his previous government service, now he retained them during the time he was president, but you're right. I think the most appropriate question, investigation, and oversight mission would be: Do you know how he left government and stuck with it? But if that was really the question the Republican committee wanted to get at, then I have to ask the same questions to Pence and Trump and of course they have no interest in that and we'll be done with it.

I know you usually stick with the legal questions, but this is a political question. Do you think he's smart? Let these Republicans continue to insist on this issue of the stolen documents given that we know that what Biden did was relatively harmless and that what Trump did was not give him again the amount of documents that he had and the extent to which he tried to hold on. He lied to the Department of Justice and presented false statements from his attorneys saying that he had already returned documents that he did not have. So do you think it's a smart question for Republicans to keep at the forefront given the disparity in responses between Biden and Trump, I mean, I'm not a political expert or analyst, but you know how I see it in the Trump years and Furthermore, to this day, the Republican Party seems perfectly happy to go extinct by following the same path and continuing. making the same bad decisions that we all see have hurt them politically, you know, certainly hurt them in the eyes of the voting public, and yet they don't seem to want to rock the boat, I feel like at some point the Republican Party is going to implode. and it's just a question of who will rise from those ashes.

I think people like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger are positioning themselves to be, you know, some of those phoenixes that rise from the ashes. and take control and try to restore some sense of sanity and decency in the Republican Party, but you know, the end is not written yet, yes, I personally believe that train has already left the station. I don't think I'm going to go. be like one of those zombie movies where you suddenly know that the main zombie is killed and then everyone else who is infected just recovers like that. I think you know a lot about this party is it's just gone too far and, look, I think about your point earlier in terms of the Republican Party basically committing political suicide.

This is what happens when you don't take the opportunity after losing to do that autopsy to restructure yourself and figure out how you lost and how you're going to fix those things, change it and win next time because you just went ahead and pretended you won an election you lost. and they didn't look at the issues underlying that loss and why people voted. against Donald Trump in the Republican Party because they deprived themselves of that opportunity to reorganize well, that is exactly why they are going to continue to lose in the future, because they know that they will have the support of their base and those people who I want them to pretend that they want a election that they lost, but otherwise there are a lot of people who were clearly upset about the way the country was going under Donald Trump under these Republicans and because they didn't change anything, but they actually went further. the cliff in the direction of, you know, these lunatic election deniers and all that, because they went further in that direction, that will only continue to alienate the very people whose support they needed if they wanted to have won the last election, so this problem will continue. getting worse and, you know, far from it to me, you should interrupt our enemy while he makes a mistake, but it really surprises me how they can't see something that's so obvious.

You know, that's hurting themselves, so you know, and to the extent that there's good

news

, I don't think the House of Representatives will accomplish anything in the next two years, certainly not anything that can pass through the Senate. and even. With Jim Jordan, who is, as you know, tilting this windmill as if he's going to get the Department of Justice to release the details of the ongoing investigations, this is a loss for Jim Jordan because, at the end of the day, if he really wants to push to enforce these subpoenas, I'm pretty sure the Justice Department will hold out, there will be a legal challenge in court, and the Justice Department will win every day of the week, so this is little more than Jim Jordan doing noise, but ultimately I think it will be in vain.

Yeah, well, with that being said, we're happy to see Jim Jordan continue to, you know, continue to step on rakes and punch himself in the face. That said, Glenn, thanks for the update here if anyone watching wants to continue. legal

news

be sure to follow both of our channels. The links are here on the screen. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen and I'm Glenn Kirschner. You're looking at the legal breakdown.