House Administration chair warns hyperpolitical DAs: Weaponize the law, lose federal funding

Amid the Manhattan district attorney's reported planning to arrest former President Trump next week under a novel legal interpretation of a state law against falsifying business records, Chairman of the House Administration Committee Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.) issued a blunt warning Monday to hyperpolitical big city district attorneys: Any federal funding their offices receive may be at risk if they are abusing their prosecutorial power to settle politcal scores rather than fight violent crime.

"Often the federal government is funding and providing resources to prosecutors across the United States," Steil told the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "The purpose of that is to make our cities safer. If we find out through this investigation that instead those are being used to weaponize DAs across the country with a purpose of grinding a political ax rather than making our communities safer, we're gonna have to go back into the funding model."

After former President Donald Trump announced last week that he expected to be indicted and arrested, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy directed relevant House committees to investigate whether federal funds were being used for "politically motivated prosecutions."

Steil said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's potential indictment of Trump would be only the latest in a long list of examples of political weaponization of the legal system by radical DAs in major Democrat-run cities.  

"We continue to see DAs across the country engaged in political behavior," said Steil. "That sure looks like it's the case in this situation. What we want our DAs to do is actually go and work in the judicial system in an unpolitical way to actually hold criminals accountable and put guilty criminals behind bars."

Fellow Republican House members Chip Roy of Texas and Lauren Boebert of Colorado were among the wide range of party leaders who have closed ranks behind Trump in recent days and condemned Bragg's perceived abuse of prosecutorial authority as an instrument of partisan retribution and political control.

"The impending indictment of President Trump in NY must be treated as it is: a politically-motivated prosecution based on a strained, convoluted legal theory," Roy wrote on Twitter. "It makes clear the danger of a politicized 'justice' system that will be (is being) weaponized against ALL Americans."

Colorado GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert alluded to the years-long pattern of alleged selective prosecution of Trump and his political allies by federal law enforcement — and warned of even darker times to come.

"We're witnessing the most obscene political witch-hunt in American history," Boebert wrote on Twitter. "The federal government has been weaponized against anyone who opposes the current regime. Are you paying attention yet? This is what happens in Communist nations, not the USA."

Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul urged prosecution of the prosecutor.

"A Trump indictment would be a disgusting abuse of power," Paul tweeted. "The DA should be put in jail."