The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First History of the Capitol Hill Controversy, the White House Investigation, and Campaigning for a National Guard
A professor at a university, Zelizer is a CNN political analyst. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment. Follow him on his social media accounts. His views in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
The committee revealed evidence of extensive contact between Roger Stone and militant right-wing extremists, such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. There had been warnings from the Secret Service about the possibility of violence against the Capitol.
The committee is obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion. In order to protect our republic, every American is entitled to the answers.
There was never-before-seen footage of Pelosi, Schumer and other legislative leaders scrambling to get more police and national guard forces to help repel the rioters on Capitol Hill.
In public hearings during the past four months, the bipartisan panel attempted to reveal the full context of what happened that day and who was responsible.
Unlike the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974, one of the most distinctive elements of Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 election is that so much of it happened in broad daylight.
The rhetoric of a stolen election would frame the entire operation, sowing doubt among his supporters about the legitimacy of Biden’s victory and creating a basis for going to court and leaning on state officials. The team discussed how to get their goal.
The Bannon-President Campaign During the January 6, 2014, Elusive Event: The Case for a Systematic Election-Loss
Yet the committee managed to fill out the story in very important ways, providing shocking evidence and details as to how the events of those months were even more dangerous than we understood at the time.
The intention is there. The committee demonstrated that January 6 was not some sort of one-off, unintended day of chaos where events unexpectedly spun out of control. It was premeditated.
But the committee’s findings have provided a formidable body of evidence that there was an elaborate effort, led by the President of the United States and his Republican allies in Congress, to systematically overturn an election that he lost.
As viewers could hear, Steve Bannon said to a group of non-identified associates that the former president would declare victory, which didn’t mean he was victorious, just that he would say he was. “If Biden is winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit,” Bannon predicted.
“President Trump was informed over and over again, by his senior appointees, campaign experts and those who had served him for years,” the executive summary states, “that his election fraud allegations were nonsense.” The panel relied on the testimony of some of Trump’s top advisers to build its case as well as the public record.
On the day of the “Stop the Steal” rally Trump was aware that the protesters were dangerous, but did nothing to stop them. Indeed, he wanted to go to Capitol Hill but was only stopped because a Secret Service agent wouldn’t allow him to do so. The former president even lunged at a Secret Service agent and tried to steer the wheel of the car when he was told he couldn’t go, according to former aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
They wanted to see if the state officials would do their bidding. The Speaker of the Arizona state legislature, a conservative who supported the Trump administration, was alarmed when he was pressured by Giuliani and the president to have the legislature invalidate the results of his state’s election. The road map for the attempted election steal was written by the president’s lawyer, who pressured the aides of the vice president to reject the results.
The Campaign to Overturn the 2020 Election: The Event of January 6 During a Republican Outburst and an Interaction Between Democratic and Independent Officials
Continuum: January 6 was just one piece of a much larger story. Although the panel is called the January 6 committee, it would be more accurate to call it a committee to investigate the campaign to overturn the 2020 election. The months between November 2020 and January 2021, is known as the months between November 2020 and January 2021.
Chairman Bennie Thompson said that the Trump administration started a systematic plan to overturn the election. The rally, and the violence, of January 6 were just one piece of a much bigger strategy.
Throughout these events, we have learned, Trump understood exactly what was happening. He was warned many times about how he was making untrue claims and about the dangers he was taking. Lawyers such as Barr were urging him to stop, even though he had publicly supported him.
When the mob attacked the Capitol, Trump sat and watched the violence on television, Cheney said. His actions, Cheney said, were “unlawful” and “an utter moral failure” and a “clear dereliction of duty.” After finally agreeing to call off his supporters, he did so in a way that was justified by what the rioters had done.
Ongoing Threat: The committee wanted to emphasize that the danger isn’t over in 2022, during the crucial hearing Thursday. The danger to our electoral system is something that will come through in the final hearing. This is not ancient history we’re talking about; this is a continuing threat.” There’s an continued threat on a number of levels. There has been a recent rise in the rhetoric of election denialism by many Republican candidates.
Republicans who subscribe to this agenda are also running for several key offices, ranging from gubernatorial positions to secretaries of state in key states such as Pennsylvania and Arizona, all of whom will play a key role in overseeing future elections. The former president is the leader in the race for the Republican nomination.
During her opening remarks on Thursday, Cheney made this point clear when she asked why Americans should assume that “those institutions won’t falter next time” if the wrong people were in positions of power the next time around. The story of January 6 was a string of officials, many of them Republicans, who refused to support the scheme. She reminded the nation that our institutions only hold if the men and women of good faith make sure they are strong in the face of political consequences.
Cheney said the committee is considering making criminal referrals to the Justice Department, but it will be up to prosecutors to decide what, if anything, will result. We will find out if Congress can complete work on reforms, such as the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, that renders some of the mechanisms Trump was counting on incapable of doing damage in the future. We will watch as voters determine, in the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential election, whether to send a clear message to Washington that messing with democracy will not be tolerated. January 6 has been of little interest in most of the campaigns.
The committee successfully unpacked the dark days that followed the 2020 election. Right in front of our eyes they have been exposed. The biggest question is whether we will close our eyes and simply move on without demanding accountability, justice and reform.
Musk and his conservative allies have insinuated the released messages provide evidence of illicit behavior by the FBI, suggesting the exchange of secret files pertaining to Hunter Biden, and improper payments made to Twitter. But CNN’s interviews with people directly involved with the interactions and with those who have reviewed the documents disprove those claims.
The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony that Republicans tried to influence the platform and that it had even changed its policies to allow Trump to publish content that wasn’t in accordance with its rules.
The story, based on material from Hunter Biden’s laptop, caused a debate and confusion inside the company. Ultimately, they said, Twitter concluded it had made the wrong call by blocking it – something Twitter’s CEO at the time, Jack Dorsey, said back in late 2020.
According to sources at the FBI and at Twitter who spoke to CNN, none of that information was disclosed to Twitter executives trying to decide how to treat the laptop story, nor to anyone else for that matter.
What is clear is that after years of working with federal agents to find and spot foreign influence on the internet, executives at Twitter were very suspicious of anything foreigners were doing, even without a hint from the government.
“The Twitter Files confirm Q’s entire main narrative,” one QAnon influencer wrote. “Balenciaga confirms the rest.” The message was seen more than 100,000 times on Telegram and references the claims about the fashion brand being involved with child traffickers. Despite some optimism that his account would be restored, he is still suspended on TWo. Other QAnon influencers seized on the fact that former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s personal email, which Taibbi failed to censor in a screenshot he shared, used the custom top-level domain .pizza.
The House Jan. 6 Committee Report on the December 6, 2021, Insurrection: “Trump’s Biggest Mistake”
Even if the House January 6 committee does not have all the details expected in the final report, they released a summary of its key findings because they are devastating.
The committee said that the plan for Trump to overturn votes, to find new votes and even to try to cause an attack on the US congress was intentional, and that he knew he had lost.
If anyone still believes that the January 6, 2021, insurrection was overblown or an amateur effort gone wrong, the final report should put them out of business. The recommendations of the committee are historic.
The panel made four criminal referrals against Trump, including charges of insurrection, to send to the US Justice Department. According to the committee’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, if we want to survive as a nation of laws and democracy, we have to make sure this never happens again.
The White House was slow in responding to the insurrection on the US Capitol because it was worried about Trump’s popularity.
Citing former President Ronald Reagan, a conservative icon, Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the panel’s two Republicans, argued that the “peaceful transfer of power” was a “miracle” of our system and only one President — Trump — had failed to abide by this process.
The findings certainly rank among the worst scandals in presidential history. It is fair to say that a sitting President being part of a concerted effort to reverse his own election stands alongside the abuses of power that President Richard Nixon engaged in and the violations of law under the Reagan administration exposed during the Iran-Contra hearings.
The committee concluded that Trump made a history by participating in an abuse of presidential power that threatened the basis of our democracy: elections. The term “unprecedented” has been grossly overused but in this case the term works.
Thesmoking gun tape allowed politicians from both parties to say enough after Nixon obstructing an investigation.
The discoveries that national security officials in the Reagan administration violated the Boland Amendment by sending money and arms to the Nicaraguan Contras caused Reagan’s approval ratings to plummet and put his legacy in jeopardy.
The President was only saved by the fact that the committee could not directly connect the illicit operation to him and by the fact that the administration mounted an effective public relations campaign to win back public support. Congressional Democrats, moreover, decided that they wouldn’t pursue impeachment.
Even Clinton’s scandal, which was over an issue far less relevant than what faced Nixon or Reagan, clearly contradicted his public statements and legal testimony about the subject after DNA evidence emerged of his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Investigating the January 6 Committee on Madness in the Reionization of the 2016 Pelosi Trophy: Insight from the House Committee on a So-called “Fake News”
Dramatic televised hearings that proved to be capable of shifting attention to how bad the coup attempt was were drowned out by the latest celebrity scandal or news story in Washington, which made for a difficult January 6 committee. Keeping the public eye focused on any one subject is hard because there are so many places to get information.
Political realignment did not occur after 9/11 or the Pandemic. Polarization is almost always triumphant, even when the leader of a party is found to have committed egregious abuses of power.
Another related challenge stems from what social scientists call “asymmetric polarization.” The Republicans have moved farther to the right than the Democrats have done. And much of the extremism in the GOP has been tactical, where some party leaders have embraced a form of smashmouth partisanship with no guardrails as to what is permissible.
The chances of the relevant party responding or changing its ways are very low. It is worth remembering that Senate Republicans originally filibustered the plan to set up an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate January 6 and did not cooperate with the congressional committee set up instead.
The Republicans who served on the committee, including Cheney and Kinzinger, have been marginalized and pushed out of the party. During the 2022 midterms, election denialism was a central campaign theme for the GOP rather than an issue candidates ran away from.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/opinions/historical-context-january-6-committee-report-zelizer/index.html
The Watergate Scenario for January 6, 2001: a Day in the Life, in the Chaos of our Media (and Our Lives)
Nor does our media ecosystem lend itself to the sort of reaction that took place with Watergate. While there was a time, such as the 1970s, when professional journalists coalesced around the facts presented by a judicious investigation, those times are gone.
Fox News ignores the weight of evidence. Show hosts are willing to spin the news in a way that will please politicians.
In the coming weeks, there will likely be stories that misrepresent what the committee discovered and that will promote conspiratorial claims with no basis in fact. The filter-less world of social media probably will offer ample opportunity to push disinformation that contradicts the harrowing stories found in the report.
The opposition in the congressional investigation of Iran-Contra put out a minority report in 1987, but today that is no longer necessary. Opponents of the committee have multiple platforms and opportunities to spin a different tale that undercuts the power that the official findings will have.
And some of the forces that will check the impact of the report stem from a broader national culture that seems incapable of staying focused on issues for long. In our short attention span, everything must be new and fresh; we push the media from one issue to the other — and much of the news media happily oblige — with the lightning speed of TV commercials.
The Watergate scandal was the story that defined much of the period between 1972 and 1974, but for many Americans January 6 has just become one other thing among many that happened in the chaos of our era.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/opinions/historical-context-january-6-committee-report-zelizer/index.html
The Hunter Biden Laptop Story: On the Discovery of Government Censorship and the Failure of Twitter, and its Implications for the Oversight Committee
Since he is one of President Joe Biden’s campaign opponents in the next election, Attorney General Garland faces a perilous decision about indicting Trump. Jack Smith, a special counsel appointed by Garland, will make recommendation when the investigations of Trump are concluded.
The question is if the report will push Garland to take action to ensure accountability instead of focused on concerns about division in the electorate.
Given its expected dramatic findings, the January 6 report is certainly a stress test for the problematic state of our democracy. It’s not likely that it will change the basic dynamics.
Musk claims that the communication show government censorship, pointing out that the Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed by the government.
One FBI official who reviewed the communications told CNN that they discussed the actors and their activities. We are not giving any details about the narrative or the content. We are also not directing the platforms to do anything. We are just providing it for them to do as they see fit under their own terms of service to protect their platforms and customers.”
By the time the New York Post published its laptop story on October 14, 2020, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then head of site integrity, had spent two years meeting with the FBI and other government officials. He was ready for a hack and leak operation.
At a conference in November, he said that the industry was on alert for many reasons. Roth insists he was not in favor of blocking the story and thought the company’s decision was a mistake.
What Twitter did not know at the time was that Hunter Biden was the subject of a federal criminal investigation. Since as early as 2018, the Justice Department has been investigating Hunter Biden for his business activities in foreign countries. The FBI had used a subpoena to get a laptop that Biden left behind in Delaware, nearly a year before the New York Post broke the story.
For Republicans, the testimony of Twitter’s former executives gives them the opportunity to raise questions not just about the laptop story but other long-running conservative complaints about the social media company that Musk purchased last year. The Oversight Committee’s Republican ranks are full of the conference’s conservative hardliners who have complained about alleged suppression of conservative voices on Twitter.
“I am aware of no unlawful collusion with, or direction from, any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation,” James Baker, Twitter’s former deputy counsel, told the committee while under oath.
Though the former officials admitted, “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement,” their letter set the tone for much of the early discussion and coverage of the laptop.
The men and women of the FBI work to keep the public safe. Conspiracy theorists and others are trying to undermine the agency by feeding the American public misinformation.
Twitter Meets the FBI: Managing Relations between the Silicon Valley Silicon Valley and the U.S. Government for Foreign Election Meddling & Suppression Activities
Michael Shellenberger, who is among those Musk has entrusted with access to the internal messages, wrote about the Chan communication with Roth. Shellenberger does not describe the contents of the files, but he does insinuate that the timing of the message suggests Chan was secretly providing Roth information about the Hunter laptop.
The official said eight of the documents pertained to “malign foreign influence actors and activities,” the FBI’s terminology for foreign government election meddling. The official said the other two documents were posts on Twitter the FBI flagged as potential evidence of election-related crimes, such as voter suppression activities.
The FBI is required by federal law to reimburse companies for any costs they incur to satisfy subpoenas and other legal requests as part of its investigative work.
To prepare for the next election, the executives set about bolstering their internal controls, including hiring former law enforcement and intelligence officials. They had to forge a stronger relationship with the US government in order to root out foreign troll and sources of disinformation.
The released communications as well as interviews with people involved in the meetings portray routine, friendly and sometimes tense contacts between company executives and the government officials with whom they regularly interacted. Among the released communications are lively exchanges between Twitter and the FBI, revealing some of the sensitivities — and tensions — at play as the government and Silicon Valley slowly figured out how to work together.
Nevertheless, the meetings went ahead. The first one took place at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park. A person familiar with the meetings told CNN that they were held at some point in the future.
Former Twitter employees and FBI officials involved say that by 2020, their discussions had become better coordinated and useful to both sides. By 2020, Facebook was issuing press releases about some of the discussions, an indicator of how good the relationship was.
Some information about users that were not required by a legal request, like which third-party PureVPN services were used by some account-holders to access Twitter, was shown in the communications.
Others within Twitter noted the US government’s interest in Twitter’s data and urged colleagues to “stay connected and keep a solid front against these efforts.”
In December 2020, Roth gave a sworn declaration to the Federal Election Commission saying the government had warned of expected hack-and-leak incidents targeting people associated with political campaigns. Roth said that he learned in the meetings with government agencies there were “rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.”
Roth did not point to the government as the source of the rumor, but his claim that law enforcement agencies gave general warnings about disinformation campaigns dovetails with recent testimony from Chan, the FBI agent who played a key role in the meetings.
The Missouri attorney general brought a lawsuit against the government about its use of social media. The government would have only warned companies that it was a possibility of hack-and-leak campaigns, Chan said.
The first high-profile hearing for the new Republican majority is set to begin Wednesday when three formerTwitter executives testify about the ban on the New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
House Oversight Chair James Comer warned of a “coordinated cover-up by Big Tech, the Swamp, and mainstream news” to suppress a story that could hurt Biden.
“We basically want to know what the Twitter policy was with respect to how they determined what was disinformation,” Comer said. The role of the government in discouraging the suppression of certain stories is something we want to know. We want to know if and how much tax dollars were spent from federal agencies to Twitter because that’s kind of what we look into – tax dollars.”
Baker, along with the other two people appearing before the committee include the former chief legal officer and head of trust and safety.
A former employee of social media company, who later became a whistle blower, will testify for Democrats during Wednesday’s hearing.
“They’re cherry-picking witnesses who fit their narrative. It’s not like an objective examination of how Twitter functions and good and bad practices that could lead to genuine reform or regulation. That is not what they want to do, said Rep. Connolly.
Raskin plans to say in his opening statement that in the lead-up to January 6, 2021, Twitter “became the national and global platform for incitement to seditious violence against our government and a forum on the day of attack for coordinating logistical movements and tactical maneuvers in the mob violence against our officers,” according to an excerpt from his prepared remarks.
I will get to ask the executives of the social network why a member of Congress was banned permanently. Marjorie Taylor Green was banned for nearly a year from her account on the social networking site.
Greene’s account was suspended last January for repeated violations of Twitter’s Covid-19 misinformation policy, the company said at the time. After Musk bought the social network, her account was restored.
Rep. Musk, Comer, Twitter, and the Biden Administration: The Case for a Social Media Account of Minority Violating Cybercrime
Democrats say they intend to poke holes in the Republican allegations surrounding the laptop story – while questioning the committee’s decision to hold the hearing in the first place.
Ahead of the hearing, Musk traveled to Capitol Hill and met with a number of House Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Comer. The Kentucky Republican said that Musk offered him tips during the questioning, but he wouldn’t offer more information ahead of the hearing.
It was the statements from Baker, former Trust and Safety head, and former general counsel that fell flat on their face. Republicans showed, once again, that they are married to pushing claims that Silicon Valley is intentionally and unjustly censoring conservative views, even when the facts do not contort with their narrative.
“Twitter, under the leadership of our witnesses today, was a private company the federal government used to accomplish what it constitutionally cannot: limit the free exercise of speech,” committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said in his opening remarks.
The hearing is among the first efforts by House Republicans to use their newly-regained majority to launch a series of investigations into the Biden administration and what they describe as the “weaponization” of the federal government against conservatives.
Anika Collier Navaroli, a former Twitter safety policy employee called as a witness by committee Democrats, told the panel that Twitter removed the phrase “go back to where you came from” from its policy barring abuse of immigrants after Trump expressed the sentiment in a 2019 tweet targeting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-NY) and other Democratic congresswomen.
Collier Navaroli also testified that the Trump White House had asked Twitter to remove a tweet by celebrity Chrissy Teigen insulting the president. Twitter declined to do so, but Democrats seized on her testimony to rebut Republicans’ claims of political bias.
The company’s bungling of the case has been the focus of discussion and debate for more than two years after it reversed the block on the Post article.
Citing its rules against sharing hacked material containing private information, Twitter showed a warning to anyone who tried to post a link to the article saying it was “potentially harmful.” The Post suspended its account on social media because it had a story to tell.
White House Cyber Security Threats: A New Look at a Tech-Dependent Hearing and the Ups and Downs of the Media Landscape
“The decisions here aren’t straightforward, and hindsight is 20/20,” he said. “It isn’t obvious what the right response is to a suspected but not confirmed cyberattack by another government on a presidential election.”
The hearing that was interrupted by a power outage followed a split-screen format where Republicans accused witnesses of censorship and Democrats argued tech platforms had not done enough to tackle harmful content.
Greene attacked the panel for her ban and lobbed baseless allegations against the former executives. That included echoing smears against Roth previously amplified by Musk. He sold his home due to the threats he received after Musk’s broadcasts of those rumors.
Republicans were accused of wasting time and taxpayers’ money on a political crusade by the Committee Democrats.
There is no other conclusion that can be drawn from the hearing on Capitol Hill where GOP lawmakers continued to push a story about the federal government trying to stop the New York Post from reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Right-wing media outlets and personalities are happy to amplify these claims and spread them to millions of viewers who turn to them for their news. Fox News, for instance, hyped the GOP claims from the hearing on Wednesday, portraying the nonsense coming out of the hearing as if it were a serious affair uncovering considerable wrongdoing.
The first version of the article appeared in the newsletter. You can get the daily digest on the evolving media landscape here.
The Real Truth Doesn’t Matter: The Story of Joe Biden, Twitter and the New York Democratic Rep. Nick LaLota
The facts — reality — simply do not matter. It didn’t move one Republican when the Twitter executives they had subpoenaed before the committee refuted their claims. And it didn’t matter much to the right-wing media apparatus that blindly repeated them to their audiences.
Ironically, the hearing appeared to reveal that Twitter had acquiesced to Trump and changed its policies after it concluded that he had violated its rules.
But after a wild week in Washington, it’s fair to ask who is on each side of the line the Arkansas governor drew in her Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.
The GOP used the national television audience to back their hardline policies, such as the “Make America Great Again” plan pushed by Trump. But her strategy did not come in isolation. For many conservatives, liberal policies on social, economic and foreign policy may well be viewed as “crazy.” And Democrats have had their own issues with extremists in recent years, including left-wingers who once called for “defunding the police” – a position that turned into a huge political liability for their party in successive elections.
The House chamber sounded like a late night comedy club after Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene yelled “liar” at Biden. Kevin McCarthy tries to impress the lawmakers but he was one of the ones who did not certify Biden’s win in the 2020 election. McCarthy embraced Trump after the ex-president’s baseless claims of a rigged election caused an unprecedented insurrection at the US Capitol. More recently, he appeased untamed elements of his party to squeeze into power last month.
The distraction of GeorgeSantos, a New York congressman who lied about his education, job and family background, has been a problem for the new House majority. His fellow New York Republican, freshman Rep. Nick LaLota, told CNN on Wednesday, “Every time I have to come to something like this and talk about George Santos, I can’t talk about what Republicans ought to be doing instead.”
Biden’s Tease on Social Security and Medicare: Why Democrats Aren’t Sorry for What Greene and Pelosi said
Party leaders are able to fire up vital base voters and cook up a stench of scandal that could harm the Biden administration, but they risk alienating moderate voters and highlighting the GOP’s most extreme, media-hungry personalities.
Of course, political normality is in the eye of the beholder. The country is in the grips of a left-wing cultural purge, and Biden surrendered to that mob, claims Sanders, who is running for president.
It would seem that the lessons of the November elections would have applied to the approach that Sanders is taking for a rising star in the party.
Some Republicans may feel resentful because McCarthy has said that Social Security and Medicare isn’t on the table in debt ceiling talks, even though they have suggested such a step. McCarthy said on Fox that it was one of the most partisan State of the Union addresses he had ever heard.
The president positioned himself as being the bulwark between the moderate Americans and the far-right Republicans in an effort to get them to vote for him.
This is why Biden’s strategy goaded McCarthy’s most radical followers into acting out on Tuesday night after saying Americans didn’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. While he had hoped to avoid a public spectacle of extremism with millions watching on TV, his hopes of keeping his job long term rely on radicals like Greene and her wilder colleagues. The small majority makes it difficult for McCarthy to repudiate Santos, who is likely to face an 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 “pissed off” and “I don’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.”
Some Republicans are not ok with the party’s incivility. Romney went where McCarthy did not go and toldSantos 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.
The Republicans want to govern on things such as putting the economy back on track, securing the border, and holding the administration accountable.
There is a lot for House Republican chairmen to be concerned about, given the White House handling of a number of issues. There is no reason why a genuine investigation into Biden’s finances – and those of his son, who is under federal investigation – should not be part of this oversight either.
The hearing isn’t a waste of time for Republicans to cloud the Biden administration in theappearance of scandal, despite the lack of a smoking gun. Some members speculated that some of the executives on the social media site disliked Trump even if they did not suppress the story for political reasons. And for members like Greene and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, berating supposed deep-state witnesses keeps the clicks coming on conservative media and the fundraising machine turning.