House GOP opens politicized-government probe with a Fox News-ready lineup

“I’m deeply concerned about the use of this select subcommittee as a place to settle scores, showcase conspiracy theories and advance an extreme agenda that risks undermining Americans’ faith in our democracy,” said Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), her party’s top member on the panel.

Republicans defended their strategy, arguing that whistleblowers — some of whom will testify publicly — have been privately raising concerns to the committee staff. Others have met behind closed doors with the panel, including as recently as this week.

“I have never seen anything like this. Dozens of, dozens of whistleblowers, FBI agents, coming to us … Not Jim Jordan saying this, not Republicans, not conservatives, good, brave FBI agents,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the panel and the broader Judiciary Committee.

Yet two of the GOP witnesses who set the tone for the panel’s work are currently employed Fox News contributors with gripes against their onetime organizations to match: former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who recently left the Democratic Party, and former FBI agent Nicole Parker.

It’s not just the Fox News contributors who set the panel up to deliver a grievance-fueled message to the party base. The GOP witnesses included two GOP senators — Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — as well as constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley, a favored witness for Republicans in recent years. Another former FBI official, Thomas Baker, testified.

It’s the panel’s first hearing after Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to create it last month as he sought to lock down conservative votes and win the gavel. And the broad scope of the hearing — the “weaponization of the federal government,” a mission similar to the panel’s own name — is likely to serve as a springboard into a litany of topics that all fuel outrage on the right, although many of the GOP witnesses are particularly critical of the FBI’s actions dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign.

And the vast scope of the hearing in some ways mirrors the panel’s blurry boundary lines in its relationships with other House investigative work. Many of the 12 Republicans on the subcommittee — including Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) and Mike Johnson (R-La.) — have suggested they want to dig into matters that are also being pursued by the wider Judiciary Committee, the Oversight Committee and other panels.

Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary panel and the new subcommittee, wields subpoena power for both panels, making him primarily responsible for sorting out any overlap in jurisdiction. Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has stressed his coordination with Jordan, who preceded him as the top Republican there.

Democrats, mindful of the TV-caliber lineup, selected their own camera-friendly witnesses. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) — a constitutional lawyer and veteran of recent major Democratic investigations — sat alongside Grassley, Johnson and Gabbard, ready to parry allegations that his party regards as conspiracy theories. And Elliot Williams, a former Obama Justice Department official who now contributes to CNN, took alongside the other witnesses during a second panel.

Raskin warned that the subcommittee “could take oversight over a very dark alley” and that the panel’s name was “pure physiological projection.”

“Not because ‘weaponization of the government’ is its target, but because weaponization of the government is its purpose. What is in a name? Well, everything is here,” Raskin added.

And the White House fired off an opening salvo against the panel ahead of the hearing, calling it a “Fox News reboot of the House Un-American Activities Committee” that “weaponizes Congress to carry out the priorities of extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress.”

In a standard practice for fellow members, Raskin, Johnson, Grassley and Gabbard only give opening statements, sparing them from questions that would force them to go toe-to-toe with their political opponents.

The decision to rely heavily on GOP, or GOP-aligned witnesses, is a sharp-turn from the last prominent select committee — the Jan. 6 panel. That Democratic-run investigation largely relied on Republicans and officials within Trump’s orbit to tell the story of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the violent attack on the Capitol.

Grassley and Johnson discussed, among other matters, their Hunter Biden investigation and their belief that the then-Trump-era FBI worked to undercut their probe of the now-president’s son as the 2020 election drew closer.

“I’ve ran countless investigations. In the past few years, I’ve never seen so much effort from the FBI, the partisan media, and some of my Democratic colleagues to interfere with and undermine very legitimate congressional inquiries,” Grassley said.

The hearing came in the wake of a back-and-forth between Jordan and the Justice Department over his subpoena last week for documents related to certain Biden administration decisions regarding threats against school officials during the pandemic.

The Justice Department, in a letter obtained by POLITICO, told the Ohio Republican that it remained “ready to discuss next steps” on his request for documents and urged him to “reconsider engaging.”

“We are committed to working in good faith to respond to your requests and remain ready to discuss your informational needs and priorities for review and production of pertinent documents,” the department added.