Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has been tapped to chair the new subcommittee investigating the “weaponization” of government agencies, one of the new Republican majority’s top priorities.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) appointed 12 Republicans to the panel, including Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY), the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, and Reps. Chip Roy (TX) and Dan Bishop (NC), two of the conservative hard-liners who held up McCarthy’s speakership bid earlier this month. The subcommittee falls under the House Judiciary Committee, which Jordan also chairs.
Weaponization select committee and select subcommittee on coronavirus members announced: pic.twitter.com/dBvZaXny9P
— Juliegrace Brufke (@juliegraceb) January 24, 2023
“Congress hasn’t kept pace with the federal government’s potential to abuse new technology, and we need to better understand how U.S. intelligence agencies work with each other and with the private sector to collect information on Americans or to undermine their fundamental constitutional rights,” Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s (R-LA) summary of the committee says.
The committee will take advantage of information shared with the House Intelligence Committee and have the authority to review open investigations. The main targets will be the FBI, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security.
The committee is partly a response to Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s release of the “Twitter Files,” which showed White House involvement to promote or suppress certain viewpoints on social media, Axios reported. Investigation topics could include the political impulses of the FBI, the DOJ’s involvement in cases of threats against school boards, and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The formation of the panel was one of the first acts of the new Republican-led Congress. McCarthy also named members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Tuesday, among them Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a member of the Freedom Caucus who outspokenly supported McCarthy for speaker.
