House Republicans Set to Launch Probe into ‘Weaponization’ of FBI, Intel Agencies
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The Republican-controlled House is set to vote this week on a resolution to form a Judiciary subcommittee on the “weaponization of the federal government,” including law-enforcement and national-security agencies.
Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), the incoming Judiciary Committee chairman, is set to lead the panel, according to the New York Times.
The subcommittee was the subject of negotiations between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the GOP holdouts who initially opposed his bid for the speakership. Representative Chip Roy (R., Texas), one of McCarthy’s detractors in many early rounds of voting for the speakership, told Fox News that McCarthy has vowed to supply the subcommittee with at least as much funding and staffing as the now-defunct House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.
“So we got more resources, more specificity, more power to go after this recalcitrant Biden administration,” Roy said. “That’s really important.”
Roy said the panel will go “after the weaponization of the government, the F.B.I., the intel agencies, D.H.S., all of them that have been, you know, labeling Scott Smith a domestic terrorist.”
Smith’s daughter was sexually assaulted in a Loudoun County, Va., high school bathroom. He was convicted of disorderly conduct after being arrested during a heated debate over bathroom policy at a school-board meeting. The National School Boards Association referenced Smith’s arrest among a list of what it called a trend of violence and threats against school officials in a letter to President Biden in September 2021. The letter characterized parents who protest progressive curricula as potential “domestic terrorists” and requested federal help.
Attorney General Garland responded by issuing a memorandum telling U.S. attorneys and the F.B.I. to meet with local officials across the country to discuss “strategies for addressing threats” against school officials and teachers.
The new panel will have the power to investigate issues related to civil liberties and to probe how any federal agency has collected, analyzed and used information about Americans, including in “ongoing criminal investigations,” according to the New York Times. Such open investigations could include those involving former President Trump or Hunter Biden.
The Justice Department is likely to push back against any requests for information involving open criminal investigations.
The resolution up for a vote on Tuesday would give the new subcommittee the authority to receive highly classified information that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence receives from intelligence agencies.
Republicans are set to launch a number of other investigations now that they have taken control of the House, including into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and the conduct of Dr. Anthony Fauci. That inquiry is included in a House rules package slated for a vote on Monday.
McCarthy has also vowed to form a House Select Committee on China. He first tried to launch the panel in 2020, but Republicans say Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) ended the effort around the start of the Covid-19 pandemic over fears that the issue of China had become too politicized.
