Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described this week’s circumstances as “a constitutional crisis.” There’s every reason to believe he was right.
The DOJ tried to charge sitting members of Congress, who’d done nothing, with felonies that would’ve sent them to prison for decades.
Despite the gambit's failure, Schumer characterized the effort itself as “a constitutional crisis.†I don’t think that’s hyperbolic. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-02-12T16:53:14.847Z
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/democrats-want-to-turn-the-tables-on-pirro-following-failed-indictment-effort
This marked the latest in a series of embarrassments for Pirro and Donald Trump’s unraveling Justice Department, but the “no bill” failure, overseen by prosecutors with unfortunate backgrounds, did not close the book on the fiasco.
On the contrary, some of the targets of this ridiculous gambit appear eager to turn the tables on those who went after them. Politico reported:
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) on Wednesday demanded U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro preserve all evidence related to her unsuccessful effort to bring charges against him and five other Democratic lawmakers. […]
In a letter sent Wednesday to Pirro’s office, Abbe Lowell, Crow’s attorney, called the effort to indict Crow and the other Democrats involved in the video ‘a breathtaking and unprecedented level of prosecutorial overreach and misuse of power.’
A week earlier, after Sen. Elissa Slotkin told the Justice Department that she wouldn’t cooperate with its baseless investigation, the Michigan Democrat’s lawyers also requested that Pirro preserve all documents related to the matter for “anticipated litigation.”
Time will tell what, if anything, comes of this, but it’s also worth pausing to appreciate the larger context. After the grand jury dismissed the case as nonsensical, it was easy to mock Pirro and her assigned prosecutors over their humiliating failure
, but let’s not miss the forest for the trees: Federal prosecutors wanted to bring serious felony charges against sitting members of Congress who’d done nothing wrong. If successful, the charges would have sent lawmakers to prison for many years.
That’s more than just bonkers. It’s also a dangerous step down an authoritarian path.
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“I say to my Republican colleagues, if the executive branch can merely attempt to prosecute members of the legislative branch for simply exercising free speech, that is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem, it is a constitutional crisis,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday.
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