In their latest display of brazen hypocrisy, House Republicans have set out to investigate the Democrats' “weaponization” of the federal government—by weaponizing the federal government. The House GOP has already hit the ground running with political probes meant to make life hell for Democrats and to give cover to Donald Trump and his allies, even in the opening days of their new majority.
It began Monday, when Texas Representative Pat Fallon introduced the new Congress's first impeachment articles. It’s unclear if the resolution, which seeks to oust Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, will gain traction in the House. But Mayorkas has been a top target for Republicans, including the newly-minted House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who previously called on him to resign over the Biden administration’s border policies. “It is unfortunate that we have gotten to this point, but it is necessary,” Fallon said Monday. “He has willfully abdicated his duties as Secretary of Homeland Security and actively misled Congress and the American people.”
Then, on Tuesday, House Republicans approved a resolution to establish a Judiciary subcommittee that would probe the supposed “weaponization of the federal government,” a catch-all phrase the MAGA right has used to characterize everything from the investigation into the January 6 attack on the Capitol to the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home last summer. The panel, set to be overseen by Trump ally Jim Jordan, would ostensibly be tasked with investigating abuses of power by government officials and agencies. But in practice, the committee—which may include Scott Perry, a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus who is a subject of the Department of Justice’s insurrection investigation—could end up being something more like “Benghazi on steroids,” as one Democratic House staffer told NBC News this week.
“It aims to undermine the safeguards of our democracy and to embolden MAGA extremists who would rather see our institutions fail than to see Democrats and [President Joe Biden] succeed,” Jerrold Nadler, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said on the floor Tuesday. “Make no mistake, the Destroy Democracy Subcommittee will enable the House Republicans to interfere with the free operation of businesses they do not like, to inhibit the fight against domestic terrorism, and to settle political scores on behalf of Donald Trump.”
Jordan’s Judiciary Committee won’t be the only panel looking to prove the government is out to get Republicans. On Tuesday evening, James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, announced an investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents—and potential “bias” in favor of Democrats at the National Archives, the agency that fought for months to recover hundreds of documents, some classified, from Trump before his Mar-a-Lago home was raided in August.
That Biden was not similarly raided—for what appear to be a handful of documents his lawyers found at the office of his Washington think tank in November and promptly turned over to NARA—“creates the appearance of political bias,” Comer said in a letter to the agency.
It goes without saying that Biden and his administration are not above scrutiny, and it is perfectly reasonable for Congress to examine everything from his policies to his handling of sensitive materials. But House Republicans seem more interested in pushing right-wing grievances than in providing real oversight, as underscored by Jordan’s panel to investigate the investigators. “This committee is nothing more than a deranged ploy by the MAGA extremists who have hijacked the Republican Party and now want to use taxpayer money to push their far-right conspiracy nonsense,” Democrat Jim McGovern said of the Judiciary subcommittee, likening the panel to Joseph McCarthy’s notorious House Un-American Activities Committee.
If last week’s speaker vote fiasco served as a preview of the dysfunction that could plague the Republican majority for the next two years, this week’s moves are a taste of the pain it plans to inflict on Democrats for the rest of Biden’s first term. “For days, the extremist wing of the party held the rest of their caucus hostage, as they demanded a steep price for their support,” Nadler said Tuesday. “And today we have the first of their many demands on display—an open-ended investigation into whatever conspiracy theories may be headlining the right-wing echo chamber at the moment, with unchecked authority to undermine ongoing criminal and intelligence investigations.”