The real story with Donald Trumps stooge Chad Wolf and that House subpoena

| 1:22 pm EDT September 17, 2020
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As expected, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf has defied a House subpoena to testify. There was no reason to believe he’d show up. He’s in the middle of a crime spree that will send him to prison after the election if he’s not careful, so why would he be willing to testify about his crimes and potentially incriminate himself?

This had led some observers to demand that the House have Chad Wolf arrested, or have him physically dragged in to testify, or just lock him in the dungeon. But nothing works that way. If the House had Wolf arrested right now, the courts would free him by dinner time. Then Wolf would be more emboldened with his crimes, because he’d know that the House had already failed in its effort to take its big swing at him.

So what is the point of any of this? The subpoena was all about knocking Wolf off his game, forcing him to spend time talking with DHS lawyers instead of spending that time on his corrupt schemes, and goading the media into giving more coverage to Wolf’s ongoing scandals. And that’s certainly worked. The best outcome would be if the House could use the threat of subpoena to scare Wolf into making some key concessions about how he’s handling his business, in exchange for the House dropping the subpoena. There’s no sign of that yet, but the day is still young.

These things are all about leverage, and they have nothing to do with the hearing. Think back to when Bill Barr reluctantly showed up to testify earlier this summer. Nothing came of it. No one fell through a trap door. These kinds of adversarial hearings usually play to a draw. It’s the threat of a hearing that shifts the balance of power, behind the scenes, not in front of the cameras. It helps to remember that this is still government, and not a reality show. None of it works the way the TV cameras would have us think it works.