WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans introduced the historic inquiry into their new majority Thursday with a blatant claim that the federal government has been used in opposition to conservatives, luring current and former lawmakers to make a broad and convoluted agreement in which national security officials, Social media corporations and the media have conspired to oppose them.
The new House panel’s first hearing on what Republicans claim is the “militarization” of government, led by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, featured partisan and misleading, if not inaccurate, testimony about 2016 election interference, the COVID-19 crisis, and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. adding through two of the Senate’s top Republicans. Much of it concerned complaints about moves made through federal officials when former President Donald Trump was in office.
Instead of focusing on new information, the hearing focused on longstanding conservative court cases over the Trump-Russia investigation and misjudgments by FBI officials, adding anti-Trump text messages, which have been documented for years. FBI officials whose names have been invoked I left the office long ago.
Most likely, the new far-reaching investigation will control the public’s appetite for the kind of partisan and competitive surveillance and investigations that Republicans have made the centerpiece of their new majority calendar in the House.
This amounts to a high-profile platform for Jordan, the panel’s chairman, who after years of attacks on Justice Department officials on both sides, now has his own committee to lift his complaint and implement it.
Jordan said the first panel, made up of Grassley, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Hawaiian congresswoman who left the Democratic Party, is vital to “orienting” him.
Jordan said the organization of lawyers and former Justice Department and FBI officials documented the federal government’s “substitution censorship. “
The hearing touched on a wide variety of issues, some loosely related, but laid bare the GOP’s preference for using the committee as a means to attack what they say are political decisions not only in law enforcement, but also through technology. and the fitness sectors.
It has also shown the complexity of problems similar to loose speech and loose flow of data on social media, as the government is forced to stand firm with the new tactics Americans express, their policies, criticisms and polarizing beliefs.
Republicans have attributed their militarization accusations to interviews with dozens of whistleblowers over the past two years, when they were in the minority.
Grassley, an Iowa Republican, recounted a long list of frequently cited complaints about the origins of the Russia investigation and Trump’s 2016 presidential crusade and complained about what he called unfair media policy and denunciation of his investigation into President Joe Biden’s family.
Johnson, a former Republican who heads the Senate Homeland Security Committee, on his own on the committee, connected the last two presidential elections, the Jan. 6 attack and the government’s reaction to the COVID pandemic with a broad allegation of wrongdoing across federal agencies. agencies ignored or covert through the media.
But his testimony has become disputed or even debunked claims.
Grassley testified that in the 2016 election, the Democratic National Committee, as well as Hillary Clinton’s crusade, “colluded with the Russians. “That’s not an accurate characterization of what happened, and Thursday’s claim that a special counsel’s investigation found no collusion between Trump’s crusade and Russia is far less nuanced than the actual conclusion.
Johnson raised questions about the origins of the coronavirus during the tenure of Anthony Fauci, the former head of an office at the National Institutes of Health. And while the Justice Department is prosecuting Jan. 6 protesters for the Capitol attack, Johnson said the investigations “did not adequately explain why the Capitol was not yet prepared, or how many federal news agents were in the crowd. “
In response, Democrats appealed to Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. , a former constitutional lawyer and member of the Jan. 6 committee that was disbanded last year, to argue the opposite that it’s congressional Republicans, the federal government, who are militarizing their force to monitor and investigate, but oppose Biden’s management officials.
And all of this, Raskin argued, is being done in an effort to retaliate for Trump as he embarks on a presidential re-election crusade in 2024.
Raskin, who is a Democrat on the oversight committee, expressed fear that the GOP’s lawsuit against federal agencies and their workers could prove dangerous. He noted that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have noticed an accumulation of violent threats opposed to those Americans and comforts during the year ahead.