Philly DA Larry Krasner taunts House Republicans in Washington after getting a subpoena

WASHINGTON — Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, thumbing his nose at national Republicans on the morning after they subpoenaed him, rallied protesters on Capitol Hill on Thursday as one of his counterparts in Virginia, who had also been compelled by a subpoena from the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, prepared to testify behind closed doors.

Taunting both Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), the committee chair, and President Donald Trump outside the building where the committee meets, Krasner railed against Republicans generally and the ongoing legal maneuvers he said are intended to ensure progressive prosecutors like him “roll over and play dead.”

“Jim Jordan, can you hear me?” he asked as he stood before a crowd of mostly Virginians outside the Rayburn House Office Building. “Why don’t you come out here? We miss you. We haven’t seen you, and apparently, you don’t like us when we’re with you in public.”

The monthslong war of words escalated on Wednesday, when Jordan ordered Krasner’s office to produce documents about its handling of immigration issues. The Republican-led committee requested the documents in May as it accused the district attorney — as well as Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel and Sheriff Rochelle Bilal — of protecting criminal immigrants through sanctuary policies.

Republicans have similarly targeted multiple jurisdictions, including Arlington County and the city of Falls Church, in Virginia’s Washington suburbs.

The committee subpoenaed the area’s top prosecutor, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, in March for documents related to protests outside the home of deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller. After a back-and-forth in which Dehghani-Tafti requested a public hearing, the committee wrote in a July 1 letter that it was compelling her to appear to answer questions about “politicized interference in a doxxing investigation and your preferential treatment of illegal immigrants accused of criminal conduct in your district.”

“I’m here because I respect the law, and I’m here because I upheld the rule of law,” Dehghani-Tafti said Thursday as she walked by the gathering of about 75 people, some of whom wore shirts and held signs reading “No Secret Hearings.”

Krasner said the committee was afraid to conduct the questioning in a public setting because Dehghani-Tafti, whom he described as a top-notch prosecutor and communicator, would “wreck them.”

“And they are not just trying to do it to her,” Krasner said. “They’re trying to do it to a whole bunch of us — pretty much anybody who they see as standing in their way.”

Krasner did not otherwise address his own subpoena while speaking in Washington.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the committee said Thursday: “We look forward to Mr. Krasner’s compliance with the subpoena.”

In an interview after his speech, Krasner said it was important for him and other local prosecutors, some of whom were in attendance Thursday, to join together to show that “none of us are backing down.” He said that he has the same legal representation as Dehghani-Tafti to deal with the situation, and that if he was compelled to testify he would answer the committee’s answers truthfully.

“I’d be shocked if these cowards wanted a public hearing,” Krasner said. “Not because I’m so important, but because the questions are so stupid, and the truth harms them so much.”

In a private setting, he said, the committee can control any transcripts or videos and decide when and how to make them public. He compared the situation to “Putin’s Russia,” mocked Jordan for not completing law school, and repeatedly called Trump the “criminal-in-chief.”

Krasner also alleged that part of the reason he and others are being targeted is because of their ability to prosecute state-level crimes, for which Trump does not have the power to pardon. That includes potential crimes related to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender and former Trump associate who died in 2019.

“Make no mistake, Epstein class, we are coming for you,” Krasner said in shouting distance from federal lawmakers. “We’re coming for you now, or we’re coming for you later.”

Epstein’s private islands were in the U.S. Virgin Islands and his mainland home was in Florida, outside Krasner’s jurisdiction in Philadelphia.

Late Thursday afternoon in Philadelphia, Krasner said he was in the process of complying with the subpoena.

“It encompasses an infinite number of documents, many of which they’re not entitled to have, but there’s little doubt they’re entitled to have some of them, and what the law requires is what we’re going to do,” he said. “It is very likely that sooner or later we’re going to turn over some documents.”

He derided Jordan as “the criminal-in-chief’s little helper” and accused the House committee of being on a “silly mission” to try to show fault with how honest prosecutors are handling immigration issues in their jurisdictions.

“If they want to mess with Philly, they’re going to come through me,” Krasner said. “My job is to protect Philadelphians. I’m going to do that. We’re not going to have ICE agents or federal agents murdering people on the streets of Philadelphia with no consequence.”

This month ICE agents fatally shot two men in six days during traffic stops in Texas and Maine.

The House committee gave Krasner a July 29 deadline to provide the documents it requested. In a letter Wednesday, Jordan said Krasner’s “refusal to cooperate” included “bizarre and baseless demands and conditions.”

“The Committee has no obligation to entertain your unreasonable demand because as federal courts have explained, it is exclusively the prerogative of the Committee to determine how and in what manner it conducts its oversight,” Jordan wrote.

Staff writer Jeff Gammage contributed to this article.