Jim Jordan Tried to Pull Some D.C. Bullshit on New Yorkers
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan’s “field hearing” in New York City over violent crime — an attempted clapback against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s recent indictment of Donald Trump — got off to a chaotic start on Monday. It didn’t get better from there.
As the hearing began, members of the public who were denied access shouted at cops and sundry congressional staffers outside the meeting room, demanding admittance. “Let the public in! Let the public in!” the crowd shouted, moving away from their orderly line along the wall and filling the hall passageway upon learning they couldn’t get inside. “Let us in! Let us in!”
As they continued to chant, photographers and reporters came out of the hearing room to chronicle the swarming commotion. Various police entered the fray, shuttling slow-moving protesters away from the area.
Jordan may have been expecting the hearing to play out a bit more like they typically do in the halls of the Capitol, where most attendees stay quiet like their jobs depend on it — in large part because they do. But the people in New York City were not political professionals on the clock, and they weren’t constrained by the D.C. decorum that endeavors to keep politics as tame as possible, no matter the life-or-death stakes of what’s being discussed.
The chaser to this shot of wildness in a downtown Manhattan federal building came about an hour and a half later. Republican Rep. Matt Gatetz said George Soros, a frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories, was funding soft-on-crime prosecutors. “I have to address this matter of crime rates that my colleagues keep talking about,” Gaetz said. “And to the extent that there is an impact on crime rates in major cities, I would suggest that that is exactly what you get with the Soros-ization of the United States justice system.”
“Increasingly, George Soros is putting in upwards of $40 million to elect 75 DAs to be able to engage in these downgrades,” Gaetz said, apparently referring to progressive prosecutors’ general interest in prosecuting nonviolent crimes as lower-level offenses. “Not only are they downgrading the violent things — they can’t even win the cases they try.”
The highlight reel thus far also included a curious pre-hearing hallway exchange between Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) and bodega clerk Jose Alba, who was charged with murder after fatally stabbing an attacker in self defense. Bragg dropped the case following public outcry from community members, cops, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Nehls seemed somewhat jazzed about the assailant’s death during his brief conversation with Alba. “Because of your action, he will never be able to go out and terrorize anybody else in this city,” Nehls said. “Am I right or wrong?”
There was some nearly inaudible chatter about a person having the right to defend oneself, with Nehls saying: “You did the right thing, and I support you.”
Nehls elaborated during the hearing. “Defend yourself,” he said. “You are given that God-given right. That means pulling out a weapon, and put two at center mass. You’ll reduce recidivism, won’t you? And you won’t have a repeat offender.”
The messy denouement this morning was among the many ways Jordan’s peacocking proceeding against Bragg was weird, not to mention disorganized. The hearing suffered from seemingly selective access for the public and press. Even though members of the public who wanted to attend were told to get in a specific line, it was not clear that any who’d queued up as told were admitted, including an 80-year-old who was there first.
The committee staffer who handled these issues claimed that members of the public had been admitted, which was true — among them was a Trumper who got escorted out after shouting about violence. Since Rolling Stone was not among those anointed for the main hearing room, it’s not clear whether those escorted out hailed from both parties.
The provenance of public members inside remains unknown; the staffer wouldn’t say how members of the public got inside despite not being in the fakeout line, or whether they were specifically picked.
One staffer on the Republican-controlled committee (or maybe more, who knows?) got to pick which journalists were in the actual hearing room, which, of course, has real potential to screw over anyone who ever dared produce critical coverage of a particular party or candidate.
The video in the overflow press room repeatedly failed, including during testimony from victims and advocates. A judiciary staffer at one point was to put the YouTube livestream on the TV, but that failed due to the wireless connection, loading at what could best be described as early-2000s-level buffering.
The staffer’s solution was ultimately to play the hearing from a cellphone, placing it on a table at the front of the conference room where audio could be heard. It eventually came back, with repeated dips in volume, but overall seemed to work. “What the fuck is going on here?” one reporter whispered to a colleague.
Indeed, that was also the question of the hour, given crime statistics in Manhattan. New York Police Department data indicates that homicides are down nine percent in Manhattan year-to-date. Shootings have dropped 14 percent in the same period, and robbery and burglary are down in the borough by 10 and 23 percent, respectively.
Bragg’s office has said it pursued nine percent more gun prosecutions in 2022 compared with 2021, and has upped its hate-crime prosecutions by 229 percent compared with 2019. To be fair, crime stats go up and down, especially over short periods of time, but the long-term trend for New York City is far better than the “old New York” days of decay and disorder.
As Jordan attacks Bragg, the prosecutor has hit back in turn. Bragg last week filed a lawsuit against Jordan to prevent the congressman from meddling in the office’s case against Trump.