Here comes the Jared Kushner investigation

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are now demanding that the Republican majority issue a subpoena to Jared Kushner over his multibillion dollar deal with Saudi Arabia. House Republicans absolutely will not issue this subpoena. But House Democrats will get some good necessary headlines out of it, and help spark a public discussion about Kushner’s foreign financial ties and how they relate to Trump.

We don’t know what the Democrats’ next planned move is after that. They could be planning to use their majority in the Senate to investigate Kushner. But keep in mind that congressional subpoenas aren’t realistically enforceable. We’ve seen time and again that anyone can drag congressional subpoenas out in court for years. There are simply no magic wands that Congress can use to make that play out any differently, no matter how many simplistic ideas might go viral on Twitter.

But while congressional investigations are good for fact finding and educating the public, we keep being reminded that they are not criminal investigations. If Kushner is going to be taken down, it’s not going to be done by Congress. That kind of thing is done by the DOJ. And for all we know, the DOJ might already be knee deep into investigating Kushner.

I can tell that some of you are already tempted to jump to the comment section and post something like “…but if that were true we’d have heard about it by now!” I understand the sentiment, but that is 100% faulty logic – and we keep seeing it proven over and over again.

Even as people were demanding to know why the DOJ wasn’t criminally investigating George Santos, the DOJ was busy investigating him – and it ended up indicting him. Even as people were demanding to know why the DOJ wasn’t criminally investigating Donald Trump, the DOJ was busy investigating him – and it ended up indicting him twice. The DOJ simply doesn’t advertise these things, because it feels it gains an upper hand by keeping its criminal targets in the dark for as long as possible.

So yes, it’s very, very, possible that the DOJ has been criminally investigating Jared Kushner for awhile now. There is simply no way to know right now. If there is such a probe, we won’t find out until the later stages, when people loyal to Kushner are being subpoenaed (this generally comes last), and they leak it to the media in order to give him a heads up. Or maybe there is no DOJ Kushner probe. But there is no basis whatsoever for assuming that there isn’t one. The total lack of headlines about a potential DOJ probe is not in any way an indicator that there is no DOJ probe. We’ve seen this time and time again.

It’s fantastic that the Democrats are pushing Jared Kushner’s Trump-related scandals back into the headlines right now. It dovetails perfectly with the timing of Trump’s mounting indictments and upcoming trials. But let’s remember that a congressional probe is for show. It’s for educating the public. Any actual criminal probe would be coming from the DOJ – and even if that’s already well underway, the DOJ is not going to advertise it along the way.