For months now House Republicans, led by Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY), have attacked and investigated prosecutors going after former President Donald Trump, including Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
But they now have a new target in their sites, according to a report — Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb.
But Schwalb isn't going after Trump. Rather, he's going after Leonard Leo, the kingpin of the far-right Federalist Society and a key figure who helped Trump appoint a wave of partisan judges to the federal bench, , wrote Ja'han Jones for MSNBC's The ReidOut Blog.
Their interest in him follows a March report in Politico that Leo's for-profit company received tens of millions of dollars from another entity of his that's registered as a charity, which could be against the law — and that he was engaged in a lavish lifestyle that didn't line up with his official salary figures.
Schwalb was reported to have opened an investigation into this arrangement following a complaint by liberal watchdog organization Campaign for Accountability, although Schwalb has been cagey about the details of the probe, not confirming or denying its existence.
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All of this is coming at the same time that reports indicate Leo is coordinating a $1.8 million public relations campaign to burnish the image of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, at the same time a flood of new investigations reveal the justice has accepted millions of dollars in gifts from GOP megadonors, often without properly reporting them.
In a new letter to the D.C. AG's office, Jordan and Comer question Schwalb's attempt at investigating the conservative judicial activist. "The Committees are concerned that your office’s investigation may be improper and politically motivated," they wrote. "First, it appears that your office does not have jurisdiction over this matter because Mr. Leo and the organizations with which he is affiliated are, according to publicly available information, based outside of Washington, D.C. Worse yet, the Committees are troubled that your investigation could infringe upon the fundamental rights of donor privacy and free association."
All of this, wrote Jones, creates the appearance that "Jordan and Comer are working in tandem as makeshift defense attorneys, using their posts to try to shield another powerful right-winger from legal scrutiny."
