Greg Sargent writes:

As speaker, McCarthy has already declared that the GOP-controlled House will target the “weaponization of the FBI.” When the FBI executed a lawful search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Republicans treated it as a historic abuse of power, so there’s little doubt the committee will target criminal investigations into Trump.

This will likely entail subpoenas designed to “investigate” the process by which law enforcement sought the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. There will also undoubtedly be subpoenas directed at ongoing criminal investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss, and attempts to haul FBI officials before Congress.

The circuslike intimations of this shouldn’t obscure the genuinely important and complicated issues at play here. For decades, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike, the Justice Department has resisted congressional oversight of ongoing criminal investigations.

There are reasons for this. Revealing sensitive information could mean disclosures that are unfair to defendants or tip off targets and others about the direction of investigations, compromising them.

So the GOP push to pry open these investigations could get tied up in litigation, and courts may not let it get far. But that might not matter: Provoking the department into strenuously resisting oversight might be the whole point. [Continue reading…]