Trump’s taxpayer-funded legal defense team.

Jim Jordan’s new folly of ‘governing by Fox News’.

You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you,………all citizens must pay!

Who could have predicted that structuring congressional hearings around the overriding goal of generating content for Fox News would prove to be a recipe for buffoonish failure?

After winning the House last November, GOP leaders threatened a wave of investigations that would expose all manner of Biden administration corruption. Since then, the results have disappointed even Republicans, who admit party leaders inflated expectations for these hearings, which they have utterly failed to meet.

Now, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is set to chair a Judiciary Committee hearing in New York City on Monday that will target Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former president Donald Trump. But the emerging details are already shining a harsh light on what you might call the “governing by Fox News” problem, in which Republicans use committee hearings to create right-wing media boomlets but ultimately run into the buzz saw of outside scrutiny.

Jordan’s hearing will purportedly highlight “victims of violent crime in Manhattan.” This is meant to serve as the next chapter in Jordan’s attempt to weaponize his committee against Bragg’s prosecution of Trump by dramatizing the GOP talking point that the district attorney is illegitimately prosecuting Trump while letting countless “real” criminals walk free.

But this will likely create an opening for committee Democrats. They plan to use the proceedings to amplify the message that Republicans have no business griping about crime when they refuse action on gun safety in the wake of one horrific mass shooting after another.

“We are eager to use this as an opportunity to highlight what is the real pressing issue in terms of public safety around the country,” Rep. Daniel S. Goldman (D-N.Y.) told me. “And that’s the prevalence of assault weapons.”

Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), also plan to push back against lurid and widely debunked GOP claims about Bragg, New York City and crime. Among these claims: Bragg didn’t prosecute an alleged murder on the subway (he did); crime in Manhattan is at record highs (that’s nonsense); Bragg is a wholly owned puppet of George Soros (that’s pure fantasy talk); and the judge hearing Trump’s case is a Trump-hater (even Trump’s own lawyer won’t say this).

And Democrats plan to highlight potential coordination between Trump’s defense team and Republicans. CNN reports that Trump has been in direct contact with Republicans on committees that are trying to investigate Bragg’s office to “shore up support,” and this will figure in Monday’s hearing.

“It’s an opportunity for the public to learn exactly the degree of coordination and collusion between House Republican leadership and Donald Trump,” Goldman told me. He said Democrats will spotlight how “Jordan and House Republicans are serving as Trump’s taxpayer-funded legal defense team.”