MAGA/QAnon Republicans would have you believe that their new Stalinist purge committee is just like the Church Committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the CIA. It is a right-wing grievance committee of conservative victimhood fueled by the wild conspiracy theories of right-wing media to stir up its MAGAt base.
The fascist propaganda FOX News is the tail which continues to wag the dog and set the fascist agenda in the House. Phillip Bump of the Washington Post explains, House GOP rushes to deliver for its Fox News-viewer constituency.
"It is widely understood that Republicans on today’s committee hope to paint a similarly lurid tale, this time depicting conservatives as mass victims of jack-booted oppression," @ThePlumLineGS writes. https://t.co/j80rLOy3eC
— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) January 13, 2023
James Risen makes the obvious point that Coup Plotter insurrectionist “Gym” Jordan Is No Frank Church:
IN ONE OF their very first steps since taking over the House of Representatives, House Republicans have created a special new panel to launch wide-ranging investigations into what they allege are the ways in which the federal government has abused the rights of conservatives.
But Republicans and right-wing pundits have already given up on its clumsy formal title — the “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government” — and are now simply calling it the new “Church Committee.” By doing so, they are explicitly comparing it to the historic Church Committee of the mid-1970s, which conducted landmark investigations of the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the rest of the intelligence community, none of which had previously been subject to real oversight.
The new “weaponization” subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee will be chaired by Rep. “Gym” Jordan, a right-wing ally of former President Donald Trump [and Coup Plotter insurrectionist], and has a much different objective than the original Church Committee: The panel is widely expected to become a pro-Trump star chamber, investigating the officials and organizations that have previously investigated Trump, including the FBI and the Justice Department.
The Jordan subcommittee also seems likely to investigate the House January 6 committee, which operated when the Democrats controlled the chamber — and referred Jordan to the House Ethics Committee for his involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Jordan, who stuck by Rep. Kevin McCarthy during McCarthy’s marathon bid to become House speaker last week, is now being rewarded with the mandate and resources to conduct investigations into almost any corner of the government he chooses; those probes have the potential to make the Biden administration look bad or Trump look good. McCarthy has even authorized the subcommittee to examine ongoing criminal investigations, which the Justice Department will certainly oppose.
This is not only a violation of the separation of powers, it is shameless obstruction of justice. It is what Rep. Jamie Raskin has dubbed the “Insurrection Protection Team,” and others have dubbed the “Republican Committee to Obstruct Justice.” It is the worst abuse of power since the out-of-control communist witch hunts of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and the slander by innuendo of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Carl Hulse and Adam Goldman write at the New York Times, New House Investigation Panel Stirs Memories of an Earlier McCarthy (excerpt):
Americans have seen [this] scenario play out multiple times in history, with the latest example being the successful push by House Republicans to create the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to investigate purported instances of federal agencies such as the F.B.I. and the military pursuing political foes and agendas.
Speaker [and insurrection leader “Traitor”] Kevin McCarthy and other Republican backers of the new panel portray their effort as akin to the Senate’s famed Church Committee, a highly regarded bipartisan inquiry in the mid-1970s. Informally known by the name of the panel’s chairman, Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho, the committee uncovered serious wrongdoing at the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the N.S.A., among other entities, leading to heralded civil liberties protections and much more aggressive congressional oversight of the intelligence community.
[D]emocrats and historians see darker historical parallels. They liken the Republican zeal to pursue nebulous allegations of deep-state conspiracies to the “red scare” days of a McCarthy from an earlier era: Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin.
Both the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s and investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1930s and 1940s have come to be seen as sordid, painful chapters in the congressional past, a series of communist witch hunts that needlessly destroyed lives. Lawmakers unleashed unfounded allegations in pursuit of sensational headlines and nonexistent infiltrators and traitors, and Democrats warn that the same could happen again.
“The Republicans [claim to be] the party of law and order, and now they are out to destroy law and order as long as they think the agencies of law and order are conspiring against them and not working for them,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
Democratic skepticism has been fueled by the fact that the new panel — and granting it authority to look into continuing criminal investigations — was among a host of demands that far-right Republicans made of Mr. McCarthy in exchange for their eventual votes for him in a historically drawn-out election for the speakership. Language in the resolution setting up the committee gave it the open-ended mission of investigating “how executive branch agencies work with, obtain information from and provide information to the private sector, nonprofit entities or other government agencies to facilitate action against American citizens.”
“This seems less Church and more McCarthy,” said Beverly Gage, a history professor at Yale and the author of a 2022 biography of J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime head of the F.B.I. known for his own misuse of the agency to pursue those he opposed politically.
Republicans reject such criticism and try to justify the panel by pointing to conservative causes célèbres such as “woke” school boards, internet censorship, excessive Covid restrictions and other incidents that have been found to be distorted and overblown [by the fascist propaganda Fox News and other conservative media.] They say conservatives have been subjected to a double standard of justice, from former President Donald J. Trump on down, and they intend to prove it.
Ahhh, poor babies! You have been investigated because you are a criminal enterprise which has engaged in armed seditious insurrection against the United States, and you have given aid and comfort to our enemies, you pro-Putin White Christian Nationalist fascists!
[The]Republican push smacks of the tactics of Joseph McCarthy, who used his position as the chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to open a wide-ranging investigation into charges made with little evidence but much innuendo.
His crusade to unmask communists and other subversives he alleged had infiltrated the government made him a national figure after a fairly nondescript start to his Senate career. But he was eventually abandoned by Senate colleagues who considered him a bully and was ultimately censured after a losing clash with the military in the famous nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings. Even Hoover got fed up with him. He died a ruined figure.
Larry Tye, a McCarthy biographer, said the outcome should serve as a cautionary tale.
“The one thing we can be guaranteed is a lot of people who we never knew about and will never pay attention to again will have their lives upended, because this is what these hearings do,” Mr. Tye said. “A huge warning sign ought to go up now that we have been through this before, and we ought to be very careful before we open up this demagogic can of worms again.”
Potential targets of the inquiry are already bracing for a showdown. For the F.B.I., it is a reversal of the past as the agency that helped feed McCarthy’s inquiry now finds itself in the hot seat.
Christopher A. Wray, the bureau’s director, has quietly been meeting with senators, trying to make inroads with members of Congress as the F.B.I. girds for House attacks that it is biased. Last week, he took a bipartisan contingent of senators on an agency jet to visit an F.B.I. facility in Clarksburg, W.Va.
At the Pentagon, senior officials have been preparing for hearings since it became clear that Republicans would control the House. Asked last week what steps the Defense Department was taking to prepare, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, was circumspect. “I would tell you that D.O.D. respects Congress’s important oversight role,” he said. “As always, we’ll continue to work closely with Congress and respond appropriately to legitimate congressional inquiries.”
Friends of Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, say that he has been bracing to again answer questions from Republicans over the two calls he made to his Chinese counterpart in the waning weeks of the Trump administration, during which he said that the United States had no plans to attack China.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, the first Black man to lead the Defense Department, has come under fire from conservative Republicans who complain that the Pentagon, under his leadership, has become too “woke.”
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post writes, A new House ‘Church committee’? More like an exercise in revenge.
Charles Blow of the New York Times adds, The Fraudulence of Investigating the Investigators: “[L]et’s be clear: The Republicans are using a fundamentally Trumpian tactic, accusing others of that which one is guilty of [psychological projection]. It was Donald Trump, not the Democrats, who attempted to weaponize the federal government against his enemies.”
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post suggests, How Democrats can flip the script on the GOP’s ‘weaponization’ subcommittee: “It’s Republicans who should be under scrutiny for “weaponizing” the government.”
The Department of Justice must move much more swiftly in indicting the congressional Republican Coup Plotters and co-conspirators to the January 6 insurrection, and those who provided aid and comfort to the violent armed insurrectionists: the 147 Republican lawmakers who still objected to the election results even after the Capitol attack.
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