Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) plans to introduce a bill to defund special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into former President Donald Trump.
“The House of Representatives needs to take action to defund this special counsel investigation immediately,” Gaetz said Tuesday on his podcast Firebrand, adding the House doesn't have to wait for the “appropriations process” or “the Holman rule.”
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“They are attacking our democracy and engaging in election interference right now, and if the United States Congress does not have the capability to stop that election interference, then what is all the flowery oratory about preserving the republic?” Gaetz said. “We have to operationalize that.”
Trump is currently the subject of two Department of Justice investigations, one regarding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the other, which he was charged in last month, for his alleged mishandling of classified documents that were recovered from his Mar-a-Lago home.
Smith has led the inquiry into Trump since he was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to investigate the former president's role in the Capitol riot and potential efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Trump posted on Truth Social that he received a letter from Smith notifying him that he is a target of a Washington, D.C.-based grand jury investigation.
“Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter (again, it was Sunday night!) stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation," Trump posted on Tuesday morning.
Gaetz said the bill is being introduced because the investigation is “election interference” and the DOJ has a “lack of transparency” towards Congress regarding the inquiry.
“I have sent correspondence to the attorney general. I just want to know who's on the Jack Smith team,” Gaetz said.
Gaetz sent a letter to Garland last month asking the DOJ to keep and produce all records from Smith’s office, demanding access to a staff and phone list of the employees hired by Smith or assigned to his office. Gaetz requested the documents be provided to Congress by July 7 and claimed the DOJ has been unresponsive in meeting his demands.
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“So because the Department of Justice has been nonresponsive on my requests for reasonable information that a member of the Judiciary Committee is absolutely entitled to, because this is election interference, because it is not predicated on what we all saw as a nation, President Trump said we have to stop sending money to this,” Gaetz said.
“The power of the purse is not some intermittent thing that we wield every year and a half or every fiscal cycle,” Gaetz said. “It's something that we have to wield day in and day out to achieve victory for our people and to stop this.”