By Sarah N. Lynch and Joseph Ax
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The FBI will help Texas track down Democratic state lawmakers who left the state as part of a collective effort to thwart Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts, Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn said on Thursday.
“Director Kash Patel has approved my request for the FBI to assist state and local law enforcement in locating runaway Texas House Democrats,” he said in a statement. “We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities.”
It was not clear precisely how federal agents might become involved. The FBI declined to comment.
The lawmakers have not been charged with any crimes. Earlier this week, the Republican speaker of the Texas House of Representatives issued civil warrants for the absent Democrats – most of whom have gone to Democratic-led states including Illinois, New York and Massachusetts, in part to escape Texas jurisdiction – to be brought back to Austin.
But the warrants apply only within the state and are based on House rules, not criminal law.
JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, where dozens of the Texas lawmakers have taken refuge, has brushed off the idea that the FBI could be deployed to round up legislators in his state, calling it “grandstanding” and warning that state troopers “protect everybody in Illinois.”
More than 50 Democrats from the Texas legislature left the state ahead of Monday’s legislative session, denying Republicans a quorum necessary to vote on the redistricting plan that has been championed by President Donald Trump.
The rare mid-decade redistricting is intended to flip five Democratic seats in next year’s midterm elections, when Republicans will be defending their razor-thin majority in the U.S. House.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has suggested that Democrats who raise money to help pay for fines levied due to their absence could be violating state bribery laws.
In a letter to Patel on Tuesday urging the FBI to assist the state’s local law enforcement with tracking the absent Democrats down, Cornyn wrote that he feared “legislators who solicited or accepted funds to aid in their efforts to avoid their legislative duties may be guilty of bribery or other public corruption offenses.”
David Froomkin, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, expressed skepticism that Texas lawmakers could face criminal prosecution under the state’s bribery statute, which prohibits public officials from accepting benefits in exchange for violating their duties.
He noted that the Texas Supreme Court has previously ruled that legislators are legally permitted to break quorum.
“If there’s no legal duty, then there’s no criminal bribery,” he said.
The fight over Texas’ redistricting effort has spread to other states, with the balance of power in Washington at stake. Democratic governors in states including California, Illinois and New York have threatened to redraw their own congressional maps to counteract Texas; Republicans in Florida, Missouri and Ohio are also expected to consider new maps.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Joseph Ax; Editing by Scott Malone, Mark Porter and Deepa Babington)
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