The House Judiciary Committee is threatening to legally force Arlington’s commonwealth’s attorney to send documents related to her handling of an ongoing criminal investigation.
In the latest escalation of a months-long dispute, Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) argued that he has the authority to compel Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti to submit a wide variety of materials related to her requesting limits on the search and seizure of an Arlington activist’s cellphone.
Dehghani-Tafti has so far refused to send any of these documents, arguing that the Judiciary Committee lacks authority over a local prosecutor in this context. But Jordan says she is obligated to comply with his request, in part because he says he needs the documents to consider possible legislative changes.
“If necessary, the Committee may resort to compulsory process to obtain the required materials,” Jordan wrote in a Tuesday letter.
The congressman suggested that Dehghani-Tafti “deliberately undermined ongoing investigations for political purposes” in the case in which Virginia State Police seized an activist’s mobile device, alleging that her activity outside the North Arlington home of White House chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller may have amounted to a form of illegal intimidation or harassment.
“The discretion granted by Virginia law is the authority to decide whether prosecuting, or declining to prosecute, serves the interest of justice — not whether it serves the interests of your political allies,” Jordan wrote in the letter, which was first reported by the New York Post.
The case in question concerns 66-year-old retired academic Barbara Wien, who has been accused of engaging in a brief confrontation with Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, and distributing politically charged leaflets containing the family’s home address. Virginia State Police secured a warrant to seize and search her phone on Oct. 1, but Dehghani-Tafti secured some limitations for that warrant after learning that federal authorities including the FBI were involved in the case.
Dehghani-Tafti has alleged that state law enforcement omitted essential information when it originally approached her office and has raised concerns about “an over-reaching government entity” potentially probing Wien’s device in ways that infringe on her constitutional rights and those of her friends and family.
Jordan has been requesting all case filings and various “documents and communications” between Dehghani-Tafti’s office and Virginia State Police, the FBI, the activist’s counsel and a local activism group, as well as records related to her office’s “receipt and use of federal funds.” He now says he’s seeking these documents as he considers possible legal “reforms.”
“If state and local prosecutors are refusing, for political reasons, to take adequate steps to protect senior federal government officials, the Committee may consider legislative reforms to bolster federal efforts to safeguard them,” the chairman wrote in this week’s letter.
He listed several potential changes to provide further protections for senior federal officials, such as securing more funding for federal law enforcement agencies, revising laws around security details for these officials, passing “a comprehensive federal anti-doxxing law” and updating statutes “to better address the evolving nature of threats against federally elected officials and employees.”
“The Committee is requesting information about your past decisions so that it may better understand whether a problem involving politically motivated prosecutors impermissibly interfering with criminal investigations involving federal officials is emerging and, if so, to determine whether legislation is needed to address it,” the congressman wrote.
Dehghani-Tafti told ARLnow that she is in the process of deciding how to respond.
“While I respect Congress’s oversight role, I am skeptical when it comes to federal encroachment on local matters,” she said. “My first responsibility is to safeguard the integrity of this case — which I assume the Committee would agree has to be the top priority. I’m working with legal counsel to determine if there is any information that advances a legitimate oversight purpose and will respond in due course.”
U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), meanwhile, blasted what he characterized as an abuse of Jordan’s position.
“This so-called inquiry into Parisa Dehghani-Tafti is just another example of Chairman Jim Jordan abusing his authority and that of the Judiciary Committee’s to carry out partisan fishing expeditions,” he said. “Jordan is wasting taxpayer dollars to target a local Democratic elected official — a serious misuse of committee resources masquerading as oversight and driven by purely political motives.”
Jordan gave Dehghani-Tafti a Jan. 27 deadline to respond.
