The podcast Wild Things: Siegfried & Roy is a genuinely fascinating look into the lives of the illusionists who had a long-running Las Vegas show performing magic with their white tigers. The focus of the podcast is the night in October 2003 when one of the tigers attacked Roy Horn during a performance at the Mirage Hotel, almost killing him. Host Steven Leckart talks to the main investigator from the USDA, and the podcast discusses a few times how the USDA was denied the videotape of the attack by Feld Entertainment, the company that produced Siegfried and Roy's show. The magicians and Feld were so distressed by the possibility of the USDA having the tape that a friend of theirs contacted Nevada's then-senators, Democrat Harry Reid and Republican John Ensign, for help.
The senators probably made phone calls to get the USDA to stop pursuing the tape. They might have reached out directly to the investigator himself. But, as Wild Things discusses, Reid and Ensign went much, much further. They drafted an amendment to the 2004 budget bill that would have specifically prohibited federal money from being used for obtaining the tape "through a subpoena...or any other means." Reid said then and he says on the podcast in one of his last interviews that he was concerned with the privacy of Roy Horn because images from the tape might leak. Agree or disagree (as the podcast discusses, the USDA was pretty lax in enforcing its rules on Siegfried and Roy, a major Vegas money generator), just the threat of the amendment worked. The USDA backed down and agreed to view the footage in a supervised situation. Even then, the investigator was only shown a small clip of the incident.
This isn't really about the truth or lies behind a tiger attack, which was really just a tiger being a damn tiger. It's about Congress's power of the purse and how it can be wielded. Two senators from different parties were ready to make it impossible for an agency of the government to do an investigation in the way it saw fit. While the amendment threat did not shut down the investigation, it sure as hell hampered it.
Congress has the ability to do that, to target with precision how money cannot be spent. Remember Iran-Contra? That had to do with Ronald Reagan trying to get around the Boland Amendment, when Congress said that federal money could not be used to support the Contras attempting to overthrow the government in Nicaragua.
The power of the purse is something that has been used to affect policy for good reasons, especially with a bad actor (on so many levels) like Reagan. And it is something that is occasionally used for petty political points. It's also one of those many things that we've learned in the last few years absolutely depends on our leaders actually caring that government functions. It relies on the legislative branch not being jerks. We've seen the fraying of that since Newt Gingrich decided to shut down the government in a hissy fit. We see it with the Republicans' bad faith in the wielding of the debt ceiling as a weapon.
When some of us say the committee looking into the January 6 insurrection needs to act quickly, it's because there is a decent chance that the GOP takes over the House of Representatives and simply ends the committee. Any referrals to the Justice Department need to happen soon because if the House changes hands, then in January 2023, it's over. When we say that Attorney General Merrick Garland better have charges out there, it's not because we're anxious and curious and need to move the plot forward for our emotional satisfaction and our need for vengeance against the Trump mob.
It's because the Republicans who will take over the House are motherfucking crazy and don't give a single shit if they blow the whole place up. And I'm not sure I just mean that metaphorically with these insane lizard-brained savages.
There is nothing that stops a Jim Jordan-led House (you heard me) from passing a budget resolution that defunds any effort by the DOJ from pursuing any case against Donald Trump or his shitty children or the assorted clowns, whores, thieves, and Jared that made up his administration. They won't play chicken with Democrats because the idea with chicken is that both sides have the chance of turning before the crash. That's not the way a House of Representatives with barking mad mongrels like Paul Gosar or Marjorie Taylor Greene leading or in the majority on committees will work. They're not playing chicken. They're playing demolition derby. These America-hating cockscabs will gladly shut down the government. And Democrats will give in because they want the government to function. They will give in with the bullshit hope of fighting another day.
And you might say that the investigations in Georgia or New York would do the trick on Trump. Except the same kind of targeted budgetary action can take place. I'd bet that New York's own shit Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik would sponsor a resolution saying that federal funding for her state is contingent on dropping the cases against Trump and the Trumplings because that's exactly how fucked up Republicans have made the whole fucking political system now.
And you might say that this kind of blatant fuckery can be taken to court. Except, you know, the Supreme Court has lost its shit, too.
Yes, we don't know what exactly is going on with all the investigations. Yes, they are doing so much work, interviewing so may witnesses, going through mountains of documents, all with no leaks, and we don't know if something is going to drop any day now. All of that can be true, but the motherfucking clock is ticking.
If a couple of senators can use the power of the purse to protect some rich-ass magicians, a criminally insane political party, freed of the straitjacket of minority status in Congress, is gonna go much, much further and strangle the investigations with the purse strings.
