Traditionally, congressional leaders in both parties have seen the House Intelligence Committee as one of Capitol Hill’s most serious and apolitical bodies. Those norms are rapidly being trashed by contemporary House Republicans.
Around this time two years ago, for example, House GOP leaders, in an unprecedented move, kicked two Democratic members off the intelligence panel in an unnecessary and brazenly partisan display. A year later, House Speaker Mike Johnson tapped two of his most right-wing members for the committee, generating bipartisan pushback.
When the Louisiana Republican was pressed for an explanation, Johnson reportedly told his members that the appointments came at the behest of Donald Trump, who wanted unqualified MAGA loyalists on the powerful panel.
It’s against this backdrop that the beleaguered speaker made yet another highly provocative move on the panel formally known as the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. NBC News reported:
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has informed Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, that he will no longer be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, according to a GOP leadership source and a Republican lawmaker familiar with the matter. The lawmaker said Turner told him Wednesday that he would not be staying on as head of the critical panel that conducts oversight of the U.S. intelligence community.
Turner confirmed in a written statement that he’d been stripped of his intelligence committee gavel, though the Ohioan did not explain why, exactly, he’d been demoted.
Similarly, the House speaker also struggled to explain the motivation for the unexpected decision. Johnson told reporters he considers himself “a Mike Turner fan,” celebrated Turner for having done “a great job” and performing “valiantly,” adding, “I have nothing but positive things to say about my friend and colleague.”
But if the speaker is so enthusiastic in his support for Turner, why end his chairmanship? “We just need fresh horses,” Johnson said, adding that Trump was not involved in the decision.
There’s reason to be skeptical about that assertion — and not just because Johnson failed to make similar moves with other committees.
Turner told CBS News that the speaker cited “concerns from Mar-a-Lago” when explaining why he’d no longer serve as the Intelligence Committee chair. Several major news organizations, including The New York Times, published related reports.
If those reports are accurate, they lead to a rather obvious question: Why would the president-elect oppose Turner staying on as the chair of the intelligence panel? To understand Trump’s possible motivation, consider this paragraph from the Times’ report:
Mr. Turner, a mainstream conservative who has represented southwestern Ohio in the House for more than two decades, has at times been critical of Mr. Trump’s actions. He broke with the majority of his party on Jan. 6, 2021, and voted to certify Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 election. He has also been a leading proponent of supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia, breaking with the “America First” stance of the president-elect and many others in his party.
Indeed, it’s probably fair to say that among House Republicans, Turner is among the most enthusiastic supporters of backing Ukraine in its war against Russia, and the Ohioan has championed the NATO alliance. All of which suggests there’s no great mystery as to why there were reportedly “concerns from Mar-a-Lago” about Turner’s work. Stepping back, however, an unsettling picture appears to be coming into focus. If the reports are true and Trump was involved with ousting the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, we’re dealing with a dynamic without modern precedent: House speakers have never taken direction from the White House about who should and should not serve as committee chairs. In 2014, I referred to John Boehner as the “Speaker in Name Only” because the then-GOP leader struggled to get his own members to follow his directives, leaving him effectively powerless when trying to legislate. More than a decade later, as Johnson owes his tenure to the president-elect, there’s reason to believe the “SINO” title is poised to make a comeback.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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