WASHINGTON — Republican members of the House of Representatives voted Tuesday to create a new committee to investigate the “weapons of the federal government” against conservatives.
The Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government would have a broad mandate to look for a conspiracy between federal agencies and the private sector “to facilitate actions against American citizens,” according to the resolution.
The House approved the measure along party lines, with 221 Republicans in favor and 211 Democrats against.
Republicans have previously complained about Democrats “ruining” the federal government when the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s Florida home and when Democrats obtained Trump’s tax returns.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), likely chairman of the weaponization committee, proposed the panel would investigate an array of right-wing grievances, from imagine persecution from parents for showing up at school board meetings to social media company Twitter for allegedly censoring conservative views.
“This is about the First Amendment,” Jordan said on the house floor before Tuesday’s vote. “Your right to practice your faith, to assemble, your right to petition the government, freedom of the press, freedom of speech – everyone has been attacked in the last two years.”
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said the committee’s mandate was “arbitrarily broad” and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) “essentially gives Jordan the power to target anyone and anything he doesn’t like.”
Right-wing Republicans pushed for the committee’s creation as part of a package of House rules intended to undermine conservatives in exchange for support for McCarthy as speaker. As McCarthy’s speakership seemed in doubt last week, Republicans added language to the weaponization committee resolution giving the panel power to oversee “ongoing criminal investigations.”
“This is a committee designed to protect people who, 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 from the House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), one of McCarthy’s holdouts, last year as part of an investigation related to Trump’s. efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Perry said over the weekend that he would not step down from serving on the committee.
“This is a committee designed to protect people who, frankly, are now under investigation,” McGovern said.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) described the committee’s mission as partly concerned with Trump, suggesting there was a “two-tier system of justice” because the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to recover official documents Trump had taken from the White House, but did not conduct a raid that same after it came out this week that President Joe Biden has been keeping official documents since he became vice president.
The Justice Department accused Trump of refusing to hand over government documents despite repeated requests from the National Archives; he is also being investigated for his role in the uprising on January 6, 2021. In the case of Biden, his lawyer found some smaller 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, some Republicans sought to portray the unique dangers of Trump’s law as something that threatens everyone.
“If they can do it to the 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 that we represent the will of the caucus and the American public and Republicans don’t have an opportunity behind closed doors to form and add to this conspiracy theory,” Aguilar said.