No, Jim Jordan can’t lay a glove on Fani Willis
Now that there’s an alleged scandal involving Fulton County DA Fani Willis’ personal life, we’re hearing a lot of silly doomsday takes about how this is somehow going to derail Willis’ criminal case against Donald Trump. Nothing works that way, but we’re nonetheless going to be subjected to a lot of fear and hysteria about how it means Trump is going to “get away” with it.
Now House Republican Jim Jordan is playing into that hysteria by sending subpoenas in Fani Willis’ direction. But Congress doesn’t have oversight over state level prosecutors like Willis, and so this will go nowhere. As always, Jordan is just grandstanding so he can turn around and fundraise off it.
In short, no, Jim Jordan can’t magically keep Fani Willis from prosecuting Donald Trump. The only thing more tiresome than Jordan’s antics is the manner in which the media falsely portrays Jordan’s antics as having some chance of working.
I think our side continually makes the mistake of overstating the power that someone like Jim Jordan has in these situations, just so we can lament about how awful it is that Jordan is helping Trump “get away with it all.” But Jordan can’t actually do anything to help Trump. Haven’t we seen proof of that time and again over the past couple years? Jordan’s stunts always go nowhere. It’s always a mistake to assign powers to your opponent that your opponent doesn’t have. And it’s a mistake that Jim Jordan is counting on us to make over and over again. He keeps baiting us into providing free publicity for his toothless stunts. It’s time we stop making that mistake.
