Ron Johnson Floats Plan for Merrick Garland’s Arrest: ‘Now, It Hasn’t Been Used in the House Since 1916…’

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) proposed a plan to arrest U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday for contempt of Congress after the Justice Department declined to prosecute him.

Reacting on Newsmax to the Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute Garland for contempt of Congress – a crime which former Trump administration official Peter Navarro is currently serving a jail sentence for – Johnson protested:

We’ve got a real problem here in terms of Congress’ oversight capabilities. You know, we are invested in the Constitution with the responsibility to conduct oversight, hold the administration accountable, but unfortunately, Congress has allowed that power to atrophy over the decades. What Speaker Johnson now is pursuing is civil contempt, so he’ll go to court and try and get a court, a member of the third branch, to enforce their subpoena [against Garland].

The senator then suggested, “Though there’s actually a third type of contempt that Congress has used in the past, it’s called inherent contempt, and that is where you basically send the sergeant at arms to the individual who’s holding Congress in contempt and you arrest that individual until they comply with your subpoena.”

Johnson explained, “Now, it hasn’t been used in the House since 1916, in the Senate the last time it was used was 1935, but I think the way this is going, the way that administrations just completely blow off Congress and its constitutional responsibility and authority to enforce these things, at some point in time, some committee’s gonna have to start looking at inherent contempt as well.”

The Justice Department declined to prosecute Garland for contempt of Congress on Friday, declaring that his response “to the subpoenas issued by the Committees did not constitute a crime, and accordingly the Department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the Attorney General.”

The decision angered many Republicans, who were quick to point out that Navarro is currently serving a jail sentence for the same crime and that former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has also been ordered to report to prison next month on his own charges of contempt.

Watch above via Newsmax.