Ousted Texas RINO Sen. John Cornyn spent Tuesday endorsing a Senate investigation into one of President Trump’s sons as he continues his revenge tour after losing his primary to Ken Paxton, whom the president endorsed, earlier this year.
Cornyn seeks an ‘investigation’ into Donald Trump Jr. The vehicle is a letter from Utah ‘GOP’ Sen. John Curtis demanding that the Judiciary Committee investigate and subpoena the president’s son over a ProPublica report claiming his wedding after-party was underwritten by a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin. Cornyn, who sits on Judiciary, said he’d support the request.
News: @SenJohnCurtis is demanding that the Senate Judiciary Committee investigate and subpoena Donald Trump Jr. over a ProPublica report that his wedding after-party was paid for by a Russian oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. https://t.co/2TijzrD1dB pic.twitter.com/UGiHAwdFrk
— Punchbowl News (@PunchbowlNews) September 22, 2026
Let’s establish the timeline, because it matters more than anything in Curtis’s letter. Cornyn lost his primary to Ken Paxton after the president endorsed against him. Since then he has declined to campaign with his party’s nominee, shrugged when one of his own staffers went to work for the Democrat in that race, and flown George W. Bush into Dallas to raise money for six Republican Senate candidates in other states while pointedly excluding the one from Texas. Now, with roughly six weeks left in the campaign and four months left in his career, he wants subpoenas issued to the president’s family.
Call it what it is. This is a man burning bridges on his way out the door, and reaching for the one instrument guaranteed to wound.
Consider what’s being proposed on the merits. The underlying claim comes from a magazine story about who paid for a wedding reception. Not a contract. Not a policy decision. A party. Curtis then stacks on complaints about crypto ventures, foreign real estate meetings, and defense-sector investments — which is to say, the ordinary business activity of a private citizen who happens to share a last name with the president. There is no allegation of a crime in the letter, and Donald Trump Jr. is not a government official. He holds no clearance, controls no appropriation, and casts no vote.
And Republicans are supposed to hand Senate subpoena power to that? After watching a decade of what happens when this particular string gets pulled? The Russian collusion hoax consumed years of Trump’s first term, two congressional investigations, a special counsel, and a national nervous breakdown, and it produced nothing on the central allegation. Every Republican in Washington lived through it. Cornyn defended the process at the time. Apparently he learned nothing from how it ended.
The practical politics are worse than the principle. Democrats have spent months trying to make foreign entanglement a midterm issue and getting nowhere. Now two Republican senators have volunteered to supply the headline: GOP demands Russia probe of Trump’s son. Every political opposition (read Democrats) ad writer in the country got a gift on Tuesday, and it came from inside our own caucus. Just pathetic. And Cornyn probably still wonders why the president didn’t back him. This is why.
Curtis, for his part, is the senator who wants to create a state-sponsored visa pipeline to import more foreign labor. He’s been at odds with the party’s voters for a while. Cornyn’s excuse is simpler and smaller: he lost, and he’s angry, and he’s discovered that the last thing a defeated senator still controls is his ability to make trouble.
Texas Republicans made the right call in March. Every week since has confirmed it.
