WASHINGTON ― Republican House members voted Tuesday to create a new committee to investigate the supposed “weaponization of the federal government” against conservatives.
The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will have a broad mandate to look for conspiracies among federal agencies and the private sector “to facilitate action against American citizens,” according to the resolution.
The House approved the measure along party lines, with 221 Republicans in support and 211 Democrats against.
Republicans previously complained of Democrats “weaponizing” the federal government when the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida and when Democrats obtained Trump’s tax returns.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the likely chair of the weaponization committee, suggested the panel would investigate an array of right-wing grievances, from the imagined persecution of parents for popping off at school board meetings to the social media company Twitter allegedly censoring conservative views.
“This is about the First Amendment,” Jordan said on the House floor ahead of the vote Tuesday. “Your right to practice your faith, assemble, right to petition the government, freedom of press, freedom of speech ― every single one’s been attacked in the last two years.”
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said the committee’s mandate is “recklessly broad” and that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is “essentially handing Jordan the power to target anyone and anything he doesn’t like.”
Right-wing Republicans pushed for the creation of the committee as part of a House rules package meant to mollify conservatives in exchange for their support for McCarthy as speaker. As McCarthy’s speakership seemed in doubt last week, Republicans added language to the weaponization committee resolution granting the panel power to oversee “ongoing criminal investigations.”
“This is a committee designed basically to protect those who, quite frankly, are under investigation right now.”
- Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern
McGovern suggested the new language presented a conflict of interest, noting that the FBI seized the phone of House Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), one of the McCarthy holdouts, last year as part of an investigation related to Trump’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election. Perry said over the weekend that he wouldn’t recuse himself from serving on the committee.
“This is a committee designed basically to protect those who, quite frankly, are under investigation right now,” McGovern said.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) made clear the committee’s mission partly concerned Trump, suggesting there is a “two-tiered system of justice” because the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in order to recover official documents Trump took from the White House, but did not conduct a similar raid after it came out this week that President Joe Biden had kept official documents from his time as vice president.
The Justice Department accused Trump of refusing to hand over government documents despite repeated pleas from the National Archives; he’s also under investigation for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. In Biden’s case, his attorneys found a smaller number of classified documents from his time as vice president and contacted the National Archives to turn them over, according to the White House.
After the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, several Republicans sought to portray Trump’s unique legal jeopardy as something that actually threatened everybody.
“If they can do it to a former President, imagine what they can do to you,” Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, led by Jordan, wrote on Twitter.
Despite describing the committee as a den of “tinfoil hat” conspiracy theorists, Democrats plan to include their own members, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said Tuesday.
“It’s in our best interest to make sure we are representing the will of the caucus and the American public and that Republicans don’t have an opportunity behind closed doors to shape and to add to these conspiracy theories,” Aguilar said.