The House Select Committee on Capitol Hill Investigations: Summary of the June 6 Capitol Attack and Summary of a Report from the 2016 Appointment
On Monday, the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol could make its final public announcement and vote to issue criminal referrals and other recommendations.
Each of the hearings in the summer focused on a particular topic, as an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Thursday hearing will look at the push to undermine President Biden’s win from a broader context.
There is a chance for new testimony to be presented at the hearing that hasn’t been shared before. That could also include materials recently obtained by the panel from the Secret Service about its role, as well as revisiting former President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on key officials.
The committee might not share the testimony from Ginni Thomas, Clarence Thomas’ wife, who appeared behind closed doors last month.
Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the committee has repeatedly stressed that his panel’s charge is to follow the facts and issue a report with the committee’s findings. He says the report will be released before the select committee sunsets at the end of this year.
The Vice Chair of the hearings,Liz Cheney, laid out in the first hearing what the panel would demonstrate: ” President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”
After the weeks of the hearings in June and July, there was some indication that Trump’s position as the leader of his party was damaged. But the Justice Department search of his Florida residence in early August served to rally most congressional Republicans around him and his argument that the expanding federal investigations were politically motivated.
“There’s new information that we’ve received since our hearings that is helpful to our investigation and we look forward to sharing what’s appropriate,” Aguilar told NPR.
In previous hearings, either Thompson or Cheney opened or closed the presentations, with a particular committee member leading the discussion. Thompson and others have said that this time, each panelist will play an equal role.
Keeping the Secret Service Alive: Subpoenas, Trumpism, the Counterattack on the FBI and the Senate Judiciary Committee
This summer, the panel dug into the role of the Secret Service in the Jan. 6 attack, while also learning new details about the agency’s deleted text messages surrounding the period of the siege. A panel subpoenaed the Secret Service to get more records after it was revealed that the department’s watchdog knew about the missing texts months earlier.
Already this session, the Republican-controlled House Judiciary and Oversight committees have held hearings on Biden’s border policies, federal COVID relief spending and Twitter’s handling of allegations surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop. GOP lawmakers, led by Jordan and Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., also intend to investigate the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and whether Biden engaged in what they have called “influence peddling” while serving as vice president.
Donald Trump descended the escalator to Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” in an effort to stay at the center of American politics. The fixation on the 45th president is no longer a distraction, according to a former congressman. Now that Trumpism has grown larger than his, he is only part of the story.
But it’s with a lingering taste of the January 6 hearings and also two Trump impeachment efforts – one of which was kicked off by Trump’s attempts to get Ukraine to investigate none other than Hunter Biden – that Republicans are planning to use the subpoena power of the House majority.
Investigating Donald Trump’s Correspondence with the Select Committee: “We are in an information warfare battle,” Riggleman tweeted on January 6, 2020
Riggleman says it’s unfortunate that the select committee devoted the bulk of its time and resources looking backward. He wonders if they missed something and still to come. “We’re trying to solve today’s problems tomorrow with yesterday’s technology. We are in an information warfare battlespace. “They’ve already changed their tactics. Deplatforming didn’t work. They do not go to other platforms.
Riggleman, a conservative who left the Republican Party after he was primaried out of office in 2020 for officiating a same-sex wedding, had asked the committee for a budget of $3.2 million for his digital sleuthing, but he says he was allocated just a fraction of that.
The coordination included members of Congress, the wife of a Supreme Court justice, myriad lawyers, little-known aides, and, of course, Trump’s most ardent supporters. Riggleman also revealed a mysterious nine-second phone call placed from the White House switchboard at 4:34 pm on January 6 to 26-year-old Anton Lunyk, who has since pleaded guilty to entering the Capitol. Despite these findings, the former intel officer bemoans not being able to go all the way down the meme- and hashtag-laden rabbit hole.
The dominoes are likely to fall after Tuesday’s vote when the Department of Justice and Republicans in the House of Representatives begin their investigations.
CNN believes that the DOJ investigations related to Donald Trump, which were quiet in the lead up to the election, could burst to life. A special counsel could be appointed to make sure things are done in a way that doesn’t affect the Biden administration.
If investigators at the Department of Justice want to indict Trump before he officially launches a presidential campaign, they’ll have to act fast. He could announce his candidacy a week after Election Day on November 14, sources told CNN, although that date could change.
If GOP wins happen on Election Day, Trump wants to control the primary and make it harder for other Republicans to get there.
Hunter Biden, the Iceberg, and the Trump Administration: How the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees will be shut down
Republicans claim banks filed more than 100 suspicious activity reports related to the president’s son Hunter Biden’s financial activities. We would like to talk to people in the Biden family, specifically Joe and Hunter.
The House January 6 committee will be shut down, and the public inquisition Republicans have been pursuing for years against President Joe Biden’s son will go into public overdrive.
Hunter Biden is the tip of the iceberg in a planned barrage of investigations. Several Republicans have called for the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, due to the president’s immigration policy.
It’s false to equate GOP efforts to investigate Hunter Biden’s business activities with the January 6 committee’s efforts to document the insurrection and Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
The letter sent to the chairs of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees shows how the White House will deal with many Republican probes which are expected to be politically motivated.
There is a new report from CNN that states all the things Republicans have promised about the Biden administration.
CNN says that investigations, hearings and subpoenas will be a big part of the GOP majority.
Zanona, Raju and Grayer write: “Most bills will be primarily messaging endeavors, unlikely to overcome the president’s veto or the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, though they would have to pass legislation to fund the government and raise the national borrowing limit to raise a debt default – an endeavor that is already alarming Democrats.”
Whatever House Republicans do will feel like a sideshow if the Department of Justice does take the unprecedented plunge of indicting Trump for either his involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election or his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
The January 6 Select Committee on Judgment Investigations: Rules of Inconsistencies and a Possible Next-Generation Investigation
While the panel was already eyeing a day later next week to release its final report and hold a hearing simultaneously, it could now hold that presentation earlier than expected.
We can finish our work a bit before that, because we looked at the schedule. We can get it to the public as soon as possible. Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters on Tuesday from the Capitol steps.
The plans come as a subcommittee of the larger panel’s four lawyers — Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Zoe Lofgren and Adam Schiff of California and Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming — met with the full panel several times this month to present their findings on referrals and other recommendations.
Donald Trump will be one of the panel’s top considerations for criminal referrals. Such a referral would come in the form of a letter from Thompson to the Justice Department making its case for the move.
The House Select Jan. 6 Committee will take up criminal referrals against former President Donald Trump on at least two charges: obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to a source familiar with the committee’s discussions but not authorized to speak publicly on the plans.
Ultimately, Thompson hinted the panel’s various referrals could fall into five or six categories, including criminal, House Ethics Committee complaints and referrals for discipline of attorneys through legal bar associations. Evidence that is new to the public could be included in the referrals and recommendations.
Five House Republicans have been subpoenaed by the January 6 panel: GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.
Ethics Referencing the 2020 Capitol Plot: Speaker Timing for a Senate Select Committee Session on the Capitol Phenomenology
Thompson has also said any attorney who was found to be connected to the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election could be disciplined for their actions.
The officer of the court that disrespects the ethics of a proceeding needs to be reviewed by the committee as part of the discussions, Thompson stated earlier this month. As a person that would consider a lawyer to have the highest possible ethical standards, I would have real issue with them not respecting those standards.
Thompson has previously told NPR the final report could be about eight chapters long and 1,000 pages in length. The committee will share transcripts from its interviews with more than 1,000 witnesses by year end.
The referrals will come in the form of a letter from the committee to the Justice Department making its case for prosecution. The Justice Department doesn’t care if someone is referred or not, they don’t carry any legal weight.
Monday’s meeting punctuates a nearly two-year investigation into what led to the violent attack at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 as a mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Joe Biden won.
It was something that we had considered. Schiff said that the committee will reveal its decision on ethics referrals Monday.
A source familiar with the situation says the panel will refer several charges against former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department.
The Department of Justice special counsel investigation is currently examining Trump, meaning the impact House referrals could have still not been determined.
The charges the committee is about to refer to the Justice Department for is related to the former president, but there were many violations of criminal statutes, including insurrection, that he thinks Trump violated.
“This is someone who, in multiple ways, tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist. This is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol. If that’s not criminal, then I don’t know what is,” he added.
“If you look at Donald Trump’s acts and you match them up against the statute, it’s a pretty good match,” Schiff told Tapper when asked specifically about a charge of insurrection.
“I think the president has violated multiple criminal laws. And I think you have to be treated like any other American who breaks the law, and that is, you have to be prosecuted,” he said.
Reply to the Special Counsel to the President and the Re-subsequent Reissue of Top White House Oversight Requests in the 118th Congress
A top White House lawyer told two leading Republicans the oversight requests they issued during the last Congress would have to be reissued once the GOP assumes their House majority next week.
White House officials believe Republicans are bound to overstep in their oversight requests and that their investigative overreach will backfire with the American public. They are prepared to push back aggressively because they believe many proposed investigations are based on politically motivated charges.
Jordan and Comer are threatening to subpoena the administration to get information. The White House said Biden’s focus would remain on other priorities as Republicans mount their investigations.
The Republicans don’t have the ability to make their requests yet, so they will need to re-submit their requests when the new Congress starts next week according to the letter from the Special Counsel to the President.
“Congress has not delegated such authority to individual members of Congress who are not committee chairmen, and the House has not done so under its current Rules,” wrote Sauber, who is one of the White House’s top oversight lawyers.
In the 118th Congress we will review and respond to similar requests, consistent with the needs and obligations of both branches. We expect the new Congress will undertake its oversight responsibilities in the same spirit of good faith,” Sauber wrote.
In a statement, Comer said, “President Biden promised to have the most transparent administration in history but at every turn the Biden White House seeks to obstruct congressional oversight and hide information from the American people.”
“As we have over the past two years, we intend to work in good faith to provide appropriate information to Congress, but Americans have made clear they expect their leaders in Washington to work together on their top priorities, like lowering costs. That’s what the president will focus on, and we hope House Republicans join him,” Ian Sams, a spokesman for White House Counsel’s Office, said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, political stunts such as subpoena threats from the minority suggest House Republicans are spending more time thinking about what to do with their time than they are about helping the American people,” Sams said.
The chamber can return to business now that the speaker of the house has been chosen and the members have been sworn in.
Every new Congress must pass a new set of House rules, and doing so will be the top of the 118th Congress’ to-do list when the House reconvenes Monday.
Kevin McCarthy, then-House Minority Leader, talked to CNN about his plans for power, ahead of the mid-term elections. The plans include tackling inflation, rising crime, and border security, as well as launching eventual impeachment proceedings, which many of his members have already begun to call for.
There will also be some must-pass policy issues – like funding the government – that will test the ability of Republicans and Democrats to work together.
Detecting Project Veritas, the Justice Department, and the FBI with a White House Closing the White House Investigations
The White House said the investigations are politically motivated and a waste of time. Reports like this are not conclusive and do not indicate wrongdoing.
The Department of Justice and FBI. GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, who is widely expected to chair the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland in November requesting a slew of documents on everything from the Justice Department’s alleged “targeting” of Project Veritas to the FBI search for classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
The southern border. Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and other department officials to make them aware that they would be called to testify.
The withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Biden’s decision to remove US troops from Afghanistan in 2021 led to a frantic attempt by many Afghans to flee the county, with devastating scenes of people clinging to the wings of planes as they tried to escape before the Taliban government officially assumed power. Republicans have signaled that they are eyeing potential probes into the events.
Jim Jordan: From Congress to the Capitol to the Rise and Fall of the AIDS Pandemic and the End of the American Diabetes Epidemic
The origins of covid-19. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce panel, has said that “how the pandemic started, that’s probably the most important public health question that needs to be answered.” Two studies released last year both concluded that a seafood market in Wuhan, China, was most likely the epicenter for the virus.
Jim Jordan will hold his first investigative hearing on border security. His transformation from leadership antagonist to leadership ally positions the Ohio Republican as a central player in House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s agenda this year.
Jordan became a member of the House Budget Committee when he came to Capitol Hill in 2007, and he immediately began his quest to shrink the federal government. In one of his early floor speeches he stressed he was new to Washington, but said, “I’ve already learned the game is called spend at every opportunity.”
His zeal to rein in federal spending helped him get elected in 2010 to be chair of the Republican Study Committee, a large group of fiscal conservatives. He made it clear that he was checking on his party in the post.
“I like to tell folks we’re the conservative conscience for Republicans here in the nation’s Capitol. Jordan said in an interview on C-SPAN in 2010 that it was their job to make Republicans act like Republicans.
He was willing to confront his own leaders. The GOP lawmaker helped found the House Freedom Caucus in 2015. John Boehner stepped down as Speaker due to the battles that he had with that group.
In an interview with CBS in 2021, the GOP leader labeled Jordan a “political terrorist”, and said he had never seen a guy like him before.
Eight years after opposing McCarthy’s first bid for speaker after Boehner stepped down, Jordan nominated him on the House floor and lobbied reluctant hardliners who didn’t think McCarthy was a true fiscal conservative, to back him.
Speaking on the House floor Jordan said, “I think Kevin McCarthy is the right guy to lead us. I really do. I wouldn’t be standing up here giving this speech. I came in with Kevin. We arrived in the same place 16 years ago. We haven’t always agreed on everything. But I like his fight. I enjoy his tenacity.
During the Senate trial, Jordan argued that Trump was being treated unfairly. “Democrats have never got over the fact that this new guy has never been in this town, never been in politics, this new guy came in here and is shaking this place up and that drives them crazy.”
Mulvaney says Jordan has credibility with the far right in the Republican Party, with conservative media outlets and now he’s also enjoying more support from the center of the party. But he warns one problem Jordan may face is keeping his investigations focused. He told NPR some lawmakers may be more worried about getting on TV than getting to the truth.
“You never know when the light is going to shine on you and you have to be ready and I think Jim was. And Jim did a great job, I thought, on the impeachment. I talked to him regularly during that period, and he was always on the ball,” Mulvaney told NPR.
I wouldn’t describe Jim as a legislator, but as a investigator with an interest in transparency and accountability. Jim doesn’t seem very happy with the Financial Services Committee. I don’t believe he would be happy with the appropriations. But the man is made to run the Judiciary Committee.”
CHIP ROY says Jordan is the best person to lead that new effort. “I don’t know anybody in town who is better prepared than Jim Jordan to go after the bureaucrats over in the executive branch and to bring a light to the weaponization of government against the American people. He’ll do a great job of it,” Roy told NPR recently.
Some House Republicans are already pressing for Jordan to move to impeach President Biden. For his part, the new Judiciary chair says that’s up to the speaker and the GOP conference.
Mulvaney says impeachment has become a political tool and should only be used when there is solid evidence of high crimes. “I hope that the Republicans will go back to that standard if they end up impeaching Biden. It would be better if it was a really, really good reason.
California Democrat Ted Lieu sits on the Judiciary Committee and told NPR recently about the panel’s new chairman, “I believe he has very extreme views. I also believe that he believes in those views so I respect that. I believe Kevin McCarthy does not believe in the things he says.
“It’s going to be a challenge, there’s no question, because lawmakers have learned that being on the right committee can make them famous and they like that.”
House Republicans are Launching Their First Investigations into Democrats: James Comer’s View on the House Judiciary Panel and the Biden Border Crisis
One recent afternoon on his way to votes, House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., remarked that he and his counterpart on the House Judiciary panel, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, are spending a lot of time together these days.
The congressman from Kentucky told NPR that they had breakfast together this morning and worked together. He’s aware of what we’re doing. We know what he’s doing. Our staffs are close, our committee rooms are next door to each other. So we work together really well.”
The Judiciary Committee’s first meeting will cover what Republicans have dubbed “The Biden Border Crisis,” part of the GOP’s look into concerns surrounding immigration and security at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Meanwhile, Comer says the Oversight panel’s first hearing will focus on spending tied to the pandemic relief bills, which he claims didn’t get enough scrutiny when Democrats controlled the House.
There have been a lot of waste, fraud and abuse with respect to the funds. “So we’re just going to roll our sleeves up and get started there.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/01/1152558713/house-republicans-are-launching-their-first-investigations-into-democrats
Defending the Bias in the Depth of the Attorney General’s Investigation into the Investigation of a Majority-Secret Discriminant
“The Democratic position is that legislative oversight is the critical instrument for making sure that we’re actually implementing our public laws and programs. The highest-ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee thinks that we should be doing this.
McCarthy said that Congress is responsible for oversight of the Justice Department. “And that also means these … individuals investigating. We have the constitutional power to do that, and we will.”
The Department of Justice, FBI and other federal agencies are alleged to be biased against conservatives. Republicans say the department retaliated against parents who spoke out at school board meetings, mishandled allegations against former President Donald Trump, and abused its data-mining powers.
“We’ll try to get the information, documents that we need, and issue the subpoenas,” Jordan said recently. They give us the runaround if they do. I guess I sort of expect that.”
For example, both Comer and Raskin agreed that there could be legislative fixes to avoid concerns in the future of mishandled classified documents by occupants of the White House, given the recent discoveries tied to former President Trump during his time in office and President Biden as vice president in the Obama administration.
“We all agree that there needs to be reform, too, and I’ve heard it too from Raskin,” Comer said. We are going to try and figure the severity of the problem by speaking with the National Archives.
Reply to Biden: Who the extremists are in Congress and what the Republicans should do about them? The case of Hunter Biden
Oversight is not about scandal mongering, it is about being open about something. Public oversight is about making sure the government is working for the people,” he said.
That posture is related to a bigger battle that will play out publicly and cause House Republicans and Democrats to be in an intense fight for the foreseeable future.
The Arkansas governor drew on both sides of the aisle in her Republican response to the State of the Union address, but now it’s time to question who she was talking about.
The unspoken purpose of Biden’s theatrical delivery on Tuesday night, and much of his presidency, is to ask Americans who the real extremists are. And the GOP’s behavior before, during and after his big night appears to be offering an emphatic answer – to moderate voters at least – as Republicans tolerate election deniers and use their investigatory muscle on topics that aren’t top of mind for most Americans.
The House chamber sounded like a comedy club when Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green was yelling “liar” at Biden. New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was seen trying to shush his ruder lawmakers, but he was among those Republicans who voted not to certify Biden’s 2020 election victory over false claims of fraud. And it was McCarthy who embraced ex-President Donald Trump after his baseless claims of a stolen election incited an unprecedented insurrection at the US Capitol. He sacrificed some elements of his party to grab power last month.
The new House majority is also grappling with the distraction of serial fabulist George Santos, the New York congressman who was caught lying about his education, his job resume and his family background. On Wednesday, Nick LaLota, a New York Republican, told CNN that he cannot talk about what Republicans ought to be doing when they are talking about George Santos.
The House Oversighthearing on Wednesday exposed how politicized the investigations have become and raised questions of the underlying question about the New York Post story in 2020 regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Party leaders can fire up vital base voters by cooking up a general stink of scandal that could hurt the Biden administration, but they will risk alienating moderate voters if they focus on the GOP’s most extreme, media-hungry personalities.
Political normality is in the eye of the beholder. Biden had surrendered to a “whey mob that can’t tell you what a woman is” and was part of a cultural purge in the country, argued the presidential candidate.
But while Sanders may be adopting a shrewd approach for a rising star in a party that often rewards far-right candidates in primaries, it would seem to fly in the face of lessons of the midterm elections, when voters in swing states rejected far-right extremism.
McCarthy has denied that Social Security and Medicare are up for discussion in debt ceiling talks, and some prominent Republicans have suggested such a step. McCarthy remarked on Fox that the State of the Union address was one of the most partisan he had ever heard.
But the president again positioned himself as the bulwark between more moderate Americans and the excess of what he has called “ultra MAGA” Republicans – a tactic he used especially successfully in the midterms.
Biden wentaded the most radical followers of McCarthy into acting out after he said that Americans don’t want to see fighting in Congress.
McCarthy, meanwhile, dodged efforts from reporters to get him to comment on the performance of Greene, with whom he has developed a strong political relationship. He hoped that he could avoid a public spectacle of extremists with millions watching on TV, but his hopes for the long term were dependent on radicals like her and her colleagues. This narrow grip on power thanks to a minuscule majority is one reason why McCarthy has also not repudiated Santos, who is expected to face a House ethics probe.
Greene told CNN’s Manu Raju on Wednesday that she wasn’t sorry for her poor manners during Biden’s speech, even though she provided Democrats with the exact image they most want to highlight. She said she was angry and didn’t clap for liars. Former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN on Tuesday night that Greene’s antics encapsulated a choice for Americans between “chaos” and “stability.”
Not every Republican is tolerating the party’s incivility. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney went where McCarthy has failed to go, telling Santos he had no place in the House. LaLota, meanwhile, in his interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, stressed how the New York Republican had become a distraction from the party’s priorities.
“We want to talk about putting our economy back on the right track, securing our border, hold the administration accountable – these are the things that Republicans campaigned on, these are the things that Republicans want to govern on,” LaLota said.
The “Nastiness of the House Judiciary Committee”: Reply to Jordan, Jordan, McCarthy, and the Vote for an Apportionment
On the basis of the same type of foreign misinformation that affected the 2016 election, the former senior officials from the social media network made a mistake in suppressing the story. They were adamant that they did not get any orders from the FBI to censor a story that would hurt Biden in the election.
As part of the Republican majority’s push to heighten scrutiny of the Biden administration, a new House panel investigated the “weaponization of the federal government” on Thursday.
Republicans and Democrats traded attacks during the hours-long meeting for the House Judiciary Committee’s select subpanel. Chairman Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who leads both the full committee and the new subcommittee, laid out his party’s plans.
The panel’s ranking Democrat, Del. Stacey Plaskett, said the panel’s Republicans are fueling dangerous rhetoric for law enforcement through its efforts. During the second impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, Plaskett was a House manager.
“I’m deeply concerned about the use of the select subcommittee as a place to settle scores, showcase conspiracy theories and advance an extreme agenda that risks undermining Americans’ faith in our democracy,” she said.
The new subcommittee hearing is the latest effort to make good on that promise. Hardline conservatives had pushed for the panel’s formation in negotiations with now-Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
According to the Washington Post-ABC News poll, almost half of Americans think the panel is just an attempt to score political points.