OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Democrats are still upset that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy removed far-left Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from committees. Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar was also removed from her committee after a vote was held in the House.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who replaced Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi in the leadership, is urging McCarthy to create a bipartisan task force to install a process to remove members from committees going forward.
“McCarthy is taking the lead in creating it and Jeffries has agreed to name members to it. The list of members who have been tapped for the task force are: GOP Reps. Tom Cole, Nancy Mace, David Joyce, and Ken Buck, and Democratic Reps. Jim McGovern, Veronica Escobar, Nikema Williams, and Derek Kilmer. This task force came out of a deal between Mace and McCarthy, in order to get Mace on board to support booting Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar off of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,” the Washington Post reported.
Schiff, in particular, has come under fire numerous times in recent weeks for his actions when he was sitting on the powerful House Intelligence Committee the last few years.
Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo accused Schiff of leaking classified information frequently and called on the Democrat lawmaker to no longer have access to it.
“During my time as CIA director and secretary of state, I know that he leaked classified information that had been provided to him. But I could tell you that when we provided information to him and to his staff, it ended up in places it shouldn’t have been with alarming regularity. We could see it. In the end, I decided I held back information from them as a result,” Pompeo said.
Last week, Schiff was hit with an ethics complaint over a campaign video he put together as he launched his bid for the U.S. Senate.
The video features a clip of Schiff presenting his case on the U.S. Senate floor for then-President Donald Trump’s second impeachment, which, according to the watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, is a violation of congressional rules.
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who is now the chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, is getting a bit of payback on Schiff and Democrats after they spent over four years using their committees to go after former President Donald Trump.
Jordan announced that he is not backing down in his investigation into President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
During an interview on Fox News, Jordan spoke with host Maria Bartiromo about alleged FBI “whistleblowers” who have been provided House Republicans with information. The Ohio Republican also spoke about other investigations being led by the powerful House Judiciary Committee.
“Tell me about the whistleblowers. How many whistleblowers are you interviewing and are they going to come public?” Bartiromo asked Jordan.
“We’ve talked to three of them. Those are the ones we’ve actually who were willing to come public and sit down for a transcribed interview. There are actually a couple of dozen others who are having been willing to come public. They have met with our staff. Our staff has interviewed them. But if they’re willing to come public, then we’ll do what we call a transcribed interview, similar to a deposition which is under oath. And you ask them questions, you get the transcript and everything else. Three of them have done that, and we’ve learned some very valuable information from those three, like what I just described that Mr. O’Boyle told us about how that threat tag was used and actually began to be turned and go after pro-lifers,” Jordan responded.
“We’re going to focus on the attacks on the First Amendment and a number of areas there, whether DHS and the Disinformation Governance Board, what we saw from the FBI coordinating and colluding with big tech to suppress information and shape and mold the narrative, we’re going to look at all that. We’re also going to look at this disparate treatment, this different standard that we see from the FBI, where they treat pro-lifers one way and then protesters a different way in other areas as well. We’re going to kind of focus there and then we’re going to look to propose legislation. And in the end, the real power of Congress, the real power of the legislative branch, is the power of the purse. And we’re going to have to use that both on all this issue where we think the government’s been targeting the very people it’s supposed to serve, but also, frankly, on the border, I think we’re going to have to look at ways to use the appropriation process to deal with the border situation, which is one of the other key areas the Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over,” he added.
WATCH:
Last month, Jordan sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding documents and information regarding the Department of Justice’s probe into Hunter Biden.
Jordan expressed concern about the “appearance of a conflict of interest” by the DOJ in not appointing a special counsel for investigations into Hunter Biden.
“To date, you have declined to appoint a special counsel in this matter, despite appointing special counsels in other investigations. Your refusal to appoint a special counsel here is conspicuous in this context,” Jordan said in the letter.
“He also requested documents from employees in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware relating to the status of a special counsel for the Hunter Biden investigation, along with communications between employees of U.S. attorney’s offices who could bring charges against Biden. Jordan has requested the information by March 14 at 5 p.m. as part of the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight of the DOJ,” the Washington Examiner reported.
Jordan suggested “something is up” with the probe because of a new interest in the story by many of the same media outlets that initially dismissed reports of corruption evidence stemming from materials and emails obtained from a laptop he reportedly abandoned at a computer repair store in Delaware in 2019.
“It sure looks like Joe Biden was involved,” Jordan added. “So, my, how this story has changed. And now, we find out these text messages and emails that link the entire family, not just Hunter and Joe and — but also uncle, the — Joe’s brother, James Biden, is involved in this as well.”
