When the new Republican majority in the House got to work in January, one of the first priorities GOP members tackled was the creation of a new panel. It’s formally called the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, and it’s chaired by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan.
Its purpose has been the subject of ample discussion, but the general idea is relatively straightforward: Far-right GOP members believe rascally officials in positions of authority have abused their powers and used federal agencies to retaliate against their partisan foes. The “weaponization” panel is determined to expose these abuses and pursue accountability.
Six months into the current Congress, the process hasn’t gone especially well. Jordan’s crusade has produced nothing; the far-right chairman has confronted complaints from disappointed conservatives who expected him to deliver; and he’s seen many headlines deriding his select subcommittee as “a dud.”
And while I don’t doubt that Jordan and his colleagues find these developments disappointing, I also think I can help get the “weaponization” panel back on track. In fact, the solution is obvious: If Jordan & Co. want to explore evidence of officials using agencies to retaliate against their partisan foes, all they have to do is put aside nonsensical conspiracy theories and start examining the ample evidence that’s already available.
As a Washington Post analysis summarized yesterday:
The good news is that, to the extent that the House Judiciary Committee’s new “weaponization” subcommittee and Oversight Committee are intent on good-faith efforts to root out examples of the government being turned against political adversaries, there remain some great and still-unexplored targets dating back just a few years — from the Trump administration.
Quite right. Just last week, for example, former White House chief of staff John Kelly affirmed, under oath, that Donald Trump wanted to use federal law enforcement to target his perceived political foes. The retired Marine general, who has no incentive to lie, has contemporaneous notes about this from his tenure in the West Wing.
If there’s a House panel devoted exclusively to scrutinizing alleged instances of powerful people trying to use government power as a weapon against their enemies, this looks like a giftwrapped case for Jordan and his colleagues.
There are plenty of other related examples worthy of the select subcommittee’s time. In fact, as we discussed last month, the former Republican president, while in office, spent much of his tenure trying to turn Justice Department prosecutors into his own personal attack dogs.
The avalanche of evidence is overwhelming. In Trump’s first year in the White House, he publicly pleaded with the Justice Department to go after his foes. A year later, the then-president told the White House counsel that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Ahead of Election Day 2020, Trump called for Clinton’s incarceration and lobbied then-Attorney General Barr to go after then-former Vice President Joe Biden for reasons unknown. The New York Times reported last year that Trump and his team “tried to turn the nation’s law enforcement apparatus into an instrument of political power” to carry out the Republican’s wishes. A Washington Post analysis published soon after highlighted the many instances in which Trump not only leaned on the Justice Department to follow his whims, but also Trump’s efforts to push federal law enforcement to validate the Big Lie in the wake of his election defeat. Is there any chance the “weaponization” committee will hold hearings, interview witnesses, and subpoena documents while getting to the bottom of these alleged abuses? Wouldn’t that be consistent with the panel’s stated goals? It’s hard not to chuckle while typing the rhetorical questions. Obviously, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will ignore evidence of Republican wrongdoing because its goals are inherently partisan and fundamentally unserious. Jordan has spent much of the year insisting that evidence to justify his panel’s existence really does exist — and in a way, that’s true. It’s just not the evidence House Republicans are willing to examine.
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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