McCarthy announces GOP members appointed to House panel on Biden admin’s ‘weaponization’ of government
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced late Tuesday the names of 12 GOP House members who will serve on the select subcommittee to “stop the weaponization” of the federal government.
The members who will serve on the committee — announced in a tweet from McCarthy — will be tasked with investigating how the executive branch has investigated and collected information on American citizens, building on the party’s promise to hold the Biden administration accountable for what it considers to be wrongdoings and oversteps throughout the last two years.
In a letter to his Republican colleagues, McCarthy said the subcommittee will expose the “weaponization of government against our citizenry, writ large.”
A resolution creating the “weaponization” subcommittee passed the House earlier this month, and will be led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who will also chair the full Judiciary Committee. The subcommittee will consist of 15 members — nine Republicans and six Democrats. It remains unclear which Democrats will be appointed to the panel.
Other Republican members who will serve on the “weaponization” subcommittee include: Reps. Darrell Issa, Calif., Thomas Massie, Ky., Chris Stewart, Utah, Elise Stefanik, N.Y., Mike Johnson, La., Chip Roy, Texas, Kelly Armstrong, N.D., Greg Steube, Fla., Dan Bishop, N.C., Kat Cammack, Fla., and Harriet Hageman, Wyo.
The panel is expected to investigate not only how the executive branch has gathered information on citizens, but how it has worked with other bodies, including private sector companies, to “facilitate action against American citizens.”
The resolution states that the committee will investigate how the executive branch agencies “collect, compile, analyze, use, or disseminate information about citizens of the United States, including any unconstitutional, illegal, or unethical activities committed against citizens of the United States.”
The resolution also notes that the subcommittee’s work will include “a full and complete investigation and study” and a final report to be submitted by Jan. 2, 2025.
“I do not think any American believes justice should not be equal to all,” McCarthy told reporters this month. “And we found from this administration what happened before every single election, whatever comes out that they utilize to try to falsify it, they try to have different standards for their own beliefs. That doesn’t work in America.”
Last week, McCarthy said that Steube — who was seriously injured after falling 25 feet while cutting a tree outside his Sarasota home — would serve on the “weaponization” subcommittee.
“I spoke with @RepGregSteube and his wife, Jen, this morning. He is in good spirits, and our entire conference prays for a swift recovery,” McCarthy wrote in a tweet. “I informed him he will serve on the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, and he is eager to get back to work!”
The committee has been compared to the Church Committee of the 1970s, in which Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, investigated Executive Branch intelligence abuse. House Judiciary Committee ranking Democrat Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., told the New York Times that he did not see this new subcommittee as comparable to Church’s.
Nadler said that the new subcommittee is “fueled by conspiracy theories and slated to be run by the most extreme members of the MAGA caucus,” while the Church Committee was “a serious and bipartisan attempt to reform the conduct of the intelligence community, based on hard and verifiable evidence.”
