New committee `weaponizing’ investigations
By Ken Tingley
The House of Representatives established a new sub-committee this week to investigate the “weaponization” of government.
It is something that should never be accepted in politics.
But it continues to live and breathe.
You may remember President Richard Nixon had an enemies list and was accused of using the IRS to investigate enemies. It was one of the counts of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974.
Since the Republicans and Democrats went to the war during the 1990s, every president since has been accused of using the IRS to go after their enemies.
“We don’t want to go after anyone, we just want it to stop,” Rep. Jim Jordan told The Hill this week. “And we want to respect the First Amendment to the Constitution that the greatest country in the world has. That’s what this committee is all about, and that’s what we’re gonna focus on, that’s what we are going to do.”
Nice sentiment, but I’m skeptical.
After Republicans took back control of the House of Representatives in November, Republicans - including our own Rep. Elise Stefanik - have gleefully promised investigations of President Biden, the FBI and the intelligence agencies without any specific evidence.
It seems ironic their committee to fight the “weaponization” of government seems to be using their new majority to do exactly that.
“I rise to make something crystal clear,” Rep. Dan Goldman said on the House floor. “The primary purpose of this special subcommittee is to interfere with the special counsel’s ongoing investigation into a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. This is a shocking abuse of power.”
There is probably some truth to that as well.
The simple difference between President Trump’s two impeachments and the January 6 investigation is that there was considerable evidence of wrong-doing that was shown during those hearings.
If the new sub-committee really wants to get to the bottom of the “weaponization” of government, it should start with perhaps the most egregious congressional abuse of the past two decades - the Benghazi investigations.
After all, there were 10 of them.
Consider that a second - 10 of them.
The 2012 attack on the embassy in Benghazi, Libya cost four Americans their lives, including the U.S. ambassador while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.
The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence delivered a bipartisan report on Jan. 15, 2014 that concluded “the interagency coordination process on the talking points followed normal, but rushed coordination procedures and that there were no efforts by the White House or any other Executive Branch entities to 'cover-up' facts or make alterations for political purposes."
But the investigations continued by six different House committees. The key factor was, not new evidence of wrong-doing, but that Hillary Clinton was the presumptive nominee for the Democrats in 2016.
The hearings uncovered no malfeasance.
The public lost interest.
It was a punch line of what Congress had become.
No evidence was ever found that Obama administration officials were involved in a cover-up or lying regarding the attack, yet the investigations continued into June 2016 with the presidential election in full swing.
Coincidence?
But there was evidence regarding the motivation of the Republican majority.
In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox TV at the time, Rep. Kevin McCarthy said:
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she's untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought."
So I think the first order of business by the new committee is to dig deeply into whether the Benghazi investigations were “weaponized.”
Maybe they should also look into why the FBI re-opened the investigation into the Clinton emails in the weeks before the 2016 election.
This new committee is not an effort to stop that, it is an effort to continue it.
Two more events
I will be speaking twice next week at local senior centers.
On Tuesday, I will be speaking at Glens Falls Senior Center at 380 Glen Street at 1 p.m.
On Thursday, I will be speaking at the Moreau Senior Center at 144 Main Street in South Glens Falls.
Republicans: the way we are going to stop weaponizing government is to have a republican committee that goes after democrats who investigated wrongdoing, which a republican president clearly was doing. To prove this is what we are doing, we are NOT going to allow investigating democrats on the committee
And if you weren’t clear about how evil we are, we are eliminating the ethics committee.
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the thing to remember about Benghazi... after 10 investigations.. they found no wrong doing, the committee, hard as they tried, could not say Hillary Clinton did anything wrong
At the same time, if that same committee had one investigation and spent four hours investigating gym jordan’s protection of pedophiles, he would not be in congress.
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there was a little meme I saw yesterday that truly explains how the gop operates:
"
I don’t know who needs to hear this but…
No one is coming for your stoves.
We’re not coming for your Dr Seuss books, your hamburgers or your M&Ms.
We’re not grooming your kids to be furries or sexualizing them at drag shows.
Those are lies. Meant to make you mad.
THE END.
"
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In other words, the republican party is trying to make the weak-minded be afraid of a boogieman that doesn't exist.. and there are many fools who are taking that fear and running home to chicken little.
The Republican Party is the word champs of hypocrisy!