Before Jody Hice was elected to Congress, the Georgia Republican was already a provocative political figure. During his first campaign, for example, Mother Jones reported that Hice — at the time, a pastor and talk-radio host — wrote a bizarre book with radical claims about the LGBTQ community, abortion rights, and Muslim Americans.
But in more recent years, Hice has become controversial for entirely different kinds of reasons.
The GOP congressman helped champion Donald Trump’s election lies, even attending a notorious strategy session in the White House in late 2020. The morning of Jan. 6, Hice published a since-deleted Instagram post that read, “This is our 1776 moment.”
Months later, Hice launched a primary campaign against Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in the hopes of applying his conspiratorial thinking to Georgia’s system of elections. (Hice lost by nearly 20 points.)
But as the congressman prepares to wrap up his tenure on Capitol Hill, there’s still another matter to deal with. NBC News reported:
Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., is fighting a subpoena to testify before the Georgia special grand jury hearing evidence in an investigation into possible 2020 election interference by former President Donald Trump and others, court papers show. Hice, a Trump ally who voted to reject the state-certified election results in Georgia and Pennsylvania on Jan. 6, is seeking to quash the subpoena from the grand jury assisting the Fulton Co. district attorney’s investigation.
At this point, there is no publicly available information on what it is, exactly, the grand jury wants to discuss with Hice. That said, what is clear is that the GOP congressman is not at all eager to comply with the subpoena or answer the questions.
As NBC News’ report added, Hice was supposed to appear before the grand jury today, but that appearance was postponed until after a July 25 federal court hearing, at which Hice and his lawyer will try to quash the subpoena.
The fact that the Atlanta-area district attorney’s office even sought his testimony, however, is striking. As a Politico report added, the subpoena for Hice “underscores the rapidly escalating pace of District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation” into alleged attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections in Georgia.
Indeed, Hice has plenty of company. It was nearly two weeks ago when the Georgia special grand jury hearing evidence in the investigation issued subpoenas to quite a few Trump insiders, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rudy Giuliani, and John Eastman, among others.
What’s more, The New York Times reported late last week, “The breadth, speed and seriousness of the criminal investigation into election meddling by former President Donald J. Trump and his associates in Georgia were underscored on Friday by the revelation that two pro-Trump state senators and the chair of the state Republican Party were sent letters by an Atlanta prosecutor informing them they could be indicted, according to a person familiar with the inquiry.”
To be sure, Team Trump and its allies have a variety of investigations to worry about, but if this one isn’t near the top of their list, they’re overlooking an increasingly serious matter.
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