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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, January 23,
2023. It's about 3.20 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States.
Late Friday afternoon, the Department of Justice responded to a letter it
had received from Congressman Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who is the incoming and current
chair of the House Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee, of course, engages in the
business of investigating all things having to do with
the judiciary, with law enforcement, etc., in order for it to inform the other members of the House
of what it has found. In his letter, Jim Jordan asked for the status of criminal investigations
in which the Justice Department is currently engaged, not the least
of which is the investigation into former President Trump with respect to January 6th
and the documents at Mar-a-Lago and President Joe Biden with respect to the documents
at his home and his former office. Now, what happens when one branch of government, the legislative,
wants to intrude into the decision-making of another branch of government, the executive?
Well, normally there's a bit of a standoff and sometimes there's a compromise. Remember,
we have the separation of powers in this country. Congress
writes the laws. The president and the people that work for him, which includes the Department
of Justice, enforces the laws. The judiciary, theoretically independent of the other two
branches, interprets the Constitution and interprets the laws. Can Jim Jordan, can the House Judiciary Committee
force the DOJ and the FBI to divulge information about ongoing criminal investigations? The short
answer is no. Does the Congress have any business knowing about this stuff? Well, yes, it does.
I mean, the Congress takes your dollars, your tax dollars, and money borrowed in your name and gives it to the Attorney General, $100 billion.
Here, spend it.
Hire an FBI.
Conduct criminal investigations.
Prosecute people.
Do the things that the Department of Justice does. to know whether it's a Democratic Congress and a Republican Attorney General or a Republican House
and a Democrat Attorney General like we have now, the people that you voted for, even people you
voted against who are in office, who make the laws, who appropriate the funds, have the right
to know how the funds are being spent. However, the executive branch has the right to conduct investigations
outside the glare of politics and outside the glare of a camera. So there's limits to what
the executive branch can reveal. And these limits are not for the convenience of the executive
branch. They're established by law. So if information has gone before a grand jury, the grand jurors can't divulge it.
There's no judge there.
The prosecutors can't divulge it.
There's no defendant or criminal defense lawyer there.
The people that work for the grand jury can't divulge it.
And the witnesses, the government witnesses can't divulge it. A civilian witness
who testifies before a grand jury can divulge what the civilian witness said, even though they're
told they can't, they can. Government witnesses, of course, can be fired or prosecuted if they
divulge it. So there's an area of investigatory behavior, which is intentionally
shielded from the public, from the press, from the Congress, even from the president, sometimes even
from the attorney general, in order not to alert the defendant of what the government knows and
what witnesses are saying about the defendant, in order not to reveal the government knows and what witnesses are saying about the defendant in order not to
reveal the government's hand showing the case that it's building against the defendant. Or
this is the least important reason from the government's perspective, but the most important
reason from the perspective of innocent bystanders. Sometimes innocent bystanders get caught up in a grand jury.
They just happen to observe something. Or sometimes people that the grand jury has targeted
are innocent and never indicted. And it might be better off for them if the fact that they were
targeted and the fact that people testified against them and the fact that the grand jury
decided not to indict was not made public. So
there's a variety of reasons, all grounded in law and history, why the DOJ will not and cannot tell
Jim Jordan what he wants to know. And there's a variety of reasons why the House of Representatives
wants to know what Jim Jordan asked about. We're spending $100 billion on you guys.
We have a right to know how you spend the money.
Is it based on politics?
Is this a go easy on old Joe because the attorney general is a Democrat and appointed by the president and go hard on Donald Trump because many FBI agents hated him?
What's going on here?
Is the FBI being weaponized? Was it
weaponized in the Trump administration against the then sitting president? These are legitimate
questions which the House of Representatives will try and resolve. Don't be too frustrated about
this. This happens all the time. Congress has many tools available to it, not the least of which is it can immunize someone.
A whistleblower that used to work for the FBI, Congress can immunize him, that is, prevent him
from ever being prosecuted using the words that he articulates in Congress. This is what happened
to Ollie North. They prosecuted him anyway, and then the conviction was thrown out because it was based on immunized testimony. But Congress has a lot of tools available to it to gather the evidence it wants to know, but it's like pulling teeth. More as we get it, there'll be a lot more on this. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.