Kevin McCarthy wants to investigate DOJ. Will these California GOP candidates follow suit?
Shortly after the FBI searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s call for an investigation of Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice resonated with MAGA faithful across the U.S.
“Attorney General Garland,” he wrote on Twitter Aug. 8, “preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”
Nearly all of California’s House GOP incumbents quickly fell in line behind McCarthy, R-Bakersfield. Should the party win control of the chamber in November, a sweeping congressional inquiry is all but inevitable.
Republican congressional candidates now have a choice: tether their futures to Trump or keep their distance and risk the wrath of the possible next Speaker and his supporters. They’ve displayed different approaches to the issue.
Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, running against Democrat Kermit Jones for the Third Congressional District seat, immediately followed McCarthy’s pledge – first in a post on his website and again in an interview.
“Obviously, there’s a lot we still have to learn about what happened and what prompted [the raid],” Kiley said last week.
The FBI, acting under a court-approved search warrant, recovered numerous top secret documents and placed Trump in possible violation of the Espionage Act.
But Kiley said the department’s actions look “politically motivated.”
“I think it is going to be incumbent on the next Congress and really, it should be incumbent on this Congress as well, to figure out what’s going on and why it is that we have this unprecedented level of politicization that has happened under the watch of Merrick Garland.”
Kiley earned Trump’s endorsement last May in the primary elections. He called the lawmaker the antithesis of “do-nothing RINO’s (Republicans in Name Only) who have watched California get absolutely destroyed by the radical maniacs in Sacramento.” Kiley has also yet to clarify whether or not he believes that President Joe Biden was “legitimately” elected.
Tom Patti, a GOP candidate for the 9th Congressional District seat (which includes Stockton and Tracy) facing Democrat Josh Harder, had a different answer. He’s “not a Trumpster” and, if elected, wouldn’t take office regarding an investigation as a certainty.
The San Joaquin County Supervisor, businessman and former boxing coach to Mike Tyson said he would not pick a fight with the DOJ for the sake of “getting back” at it.
“I wouldn’t look at this as an opportunity for payback or a time to get back at [the Justice Department],” he said. If there was any evidence of wrongdoing, however, he’d want to hold the Justice Department accountable.
California Republicans respond to FBI search
McCarthy‘s threat was echoed by a chorus of MAGA conservatives across the state — many of whom fomented the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 presidential election. Rep. Doug LaMalfa in an August 10 Facebook post called the search “a gross misuse of power by the FBI and dangerous to the basic liberties of all Americans” and “another attack in a long-winded series against political opposition to the Democrats power grabbing [sic] agenda.”
Rep. Tom McClintock said that the FBI’s action was politically motivated.
“The raid on a former President over a record dispute opens an ominous new era in which the FBI and DOJ have forfeit the trust of the American people,” the Elk Grove Republican wrote on Twitter.
In Southern California, Trump-endorsed Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, vowed to “root out the rot that has infiltrated” the Justice Department and the FBI if he keeps his seat in November. Rep. Connie Conway, who is not a candidate this fall, said that there’s a “double standard” in the FBI’s treatment of Trump and prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden. Conway replaced Devin Nunes in District 22 in June when Nunes left to be the CEO of Trump’s media company.
Further south of the Capitol, two candidates running in the Central Valley have been less outspoken. John Duarte, a first-time candidate running in newly-drawn 13th Congressional District, and Rep. David Valadao have both stayed focused on issues like water and the state’s worsening drought.
But Duarte, a farmer and businessman in a tight race against Democratic Assemblyman Adam Gray, is especially cautious of Justice Department overreach, and called the Mar-A-Lago search a “circus.”
Duarte was embroiled in a years-long legal battle with the Department of Justice when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sued him for violating the Clean Water Act in 2013. Duarte said he was unfairly punished for “planting wheat in a wheat field,” while the justice department found him guilty of “deep ripping” federally-protected streams and wetlands from his 450-acres in Tehama County without a permit. He agreed to pay $1.1 million in civil penalties and mitigation.
“As someone who was unjustly prosecuted by this same agency, I believe it is incumbent upon the Department of Justice to have full transparency about what they were seeking and what they found [at Mar-A-Lago],” he said in a statement last week.
“It is imperative for people to know why they believed this type of circus was necessary and if it wasn’t, they need to be put in check. If it can happen to a President it can happen to them.”
Valadao, however, has stayed silent about calls to investigate the Justice Department.
A dairy farmer from Hanford, Valadao voted against the grain to impeach Trump in 2021 after the January 6th insurrection. It cost him some support, he acknowledged last summer, but he won the primary anyway when his two Trumper opponents split the vote. Of the ten GOP House members who voted to impeach, he is one of only two who will be on a November ballot.
In a predicted toss-up run against Assemblyman Rudy Salas, Valadao’s approach has been sticking to Central Valley-specific issues. He could not be reached to comment on this story.
This story was originally published August 22, 2022 at 5:00 AM.