House GOP looking to punish politicized prosecutors by stripping them of legal immunity

For months, House Republicans have decried the actions of leftist local prosecutors who free violent felons or prosecute political enemies like Donald Trump. Now they are beginning to rally around a solution that could inflict significant punishment on wayward district attorneys.

Rep Austin Scott (R-Ga.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told Just the News that Republicans are considering turning the tables in a debate started by liberals a few years ago when they tried to eliminate the qualified immunity that protected police officers from lawsuits.

"I think you're going to have to look at prosecutorial misconduct and whether or not prosecutors in this country should be exempt from liability," Scott said in an interview Friday night on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Thursday that Congress will take some action to punish Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg after he brought charges against Trump after months of downgrading violent felonies against other offenders.

"As he routinely frees violent criminals to terrorize the public, he weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Donald Trump," McCarthy said. "The American people will not tolerate this injustice, and the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account."

Scott suggested Republicans are privately discussing borrowing a page from the liberal playbook from a few years ago when some Democrats moved to end qualified immunity from police officers in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing 

"These left-wing, liberal prosecutors and George Soros prosecutors want to take away immunity from police officers, yet they want to maintain it for themselves," he explained. "I guarantee you if this prosecutor did not have immunity for his actions, he would not have filed this against Donald Trump.

"So maybe we need to be looking at how a prosecutor who abuses his power the way this Manhattan district attorney has done becomes personally liable and potentially criminally chargeable for their actions. And the state of Georgia has actually created a framework where prosecutors who operate outside of their bounds could be reviewed by their peers and and potentially removed from office."

Some Soros-funded prosecutors are already facing discipline, including St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner, who has been reprimanded by the Missouri Supreme Court for misconduct in a case and recently was fired by the Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. She is contesting that action.