Collusion with Big Tech on censorship. A bungled probe that left Olympic gymnasts at risk of sexual abuse. Inaccurate surveillance warrants. Politicization of sensitive probes, manipulation of crime statistics and snooping on Congress.
Amid mounting allegations against the FBI and Justice Department — often from whistleblowers within their own ranks — House Republicans are increasingly convinced a dramatic top-to-bottom review of America’s most storied law enforcement agency is warranted.
In the last week, both House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan have endorsed the idea of a searching investigation fashioned after the 1970s Church Committee in the Senate, which exposed FBI and CIA abuses a half century ago, or the 9/11 Commission, which exposed intelligence failures leading to America’s most lethal terrorist attack.
The goal, they say, would be not only to expose failures and wrongdoing but also to impose reforms on the bureau.
“We’ve been looking at a Church-style committee to look at this,” Jordan told Just the News in a wide-ranging interview Wednesday night.
A few days earlier, McCarthy likewise endorsed the idea, which has been gaining support from security experts like retired House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes and former FBI intelligence chief Kevin Brock.
“We’ve got to get to the very bottom, and I think just subpoenas are starting, but you’re almost going to have to have a Church-style investigation to reform the FBI, the more that we are learning,” McCarthy told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Monday.
There is precedent for such an endeavor. Most recently, Congress stood up the 9/11 commission under former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, a Republican, and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, a Democrat.
Decades earlier, the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities exposed widespread abuses by the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and Internal Revenue Service under the leadership of then-Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho.
McCarthy has even suggested privately and publicly some outsiders who could serve, including Nunes and former Texas congressman and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who helped expose FBI abuses in the now-discredited Russia collusion investigation.
“You’ve listened to John Ratcliffe, early on, talk about the different things that he was fearful of them doing,” McCarthy said. “He is a former FBI, he is a former prosecutor, U.S. attorney, he’s a former congressman, and he was DNI as well. So he is the key individual that will work with us in many avenues to help solve this problem and correct it once and for all.”
In a series of interviews this month, Jordan as well as Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson have identified a dozen areas of inquiry including:
- Why did the FBI use a command center in San Francisco to suggest content on social platforms that should be censored, including the posts of U.S. citizens like an Indiana councilman identified in files released by Twitter?
- Did the FBI pressure social media platforms to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election, including by suggesting it was Russian disinformation? Elvis Chan, a key FBI agent in dealing with platforms, denies he asked anyone to censor that story. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg and Twitter owner Elon Musk have both alleged the bureau did pressure their platforms on the laptop.
- Why did the DOJ use grand jury subpoenas to eavesdrop on the email and phone data of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes’ lead investigator in 2017 as the panel probed FBI misconduct and failures in the Russia collusion case?
- Why did the DOJ and FBI treat parents protesting at school board meetings as domestic terrorists?
- Were FBI personnel in the Washington field office motivated by politics in an effort to launch a probe of Donald Trump or quash a probe of Hunter Biden, as FBI whistleblowers have alleged?
- Did the FBI violate the civil liberties of Jan. 6 defendants, as whistleblowing Agent Steve Friend alleges?
- Did the bureau and DOJ manipulate case assignments in the field to create a false impression that domestic terrorism was a bigger problem than warranted?
- Did the FBI or DOJ mislead the FISA court or other courts on search warrants, including during the Russia collusion case?
- Why was the FBI so slow to pursue a criminal case against a doctor who was sexually abusing U.S. Olympic gymnasts?
- Has the FBI has misused confidential human sources in politically sensitive cases, including the Jan. 6 riot, the kidnapping plot against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the Russia collusion case targeting the Trump campaign?
Jordan stepped up his investigation into social media censorship on Friday, demanding that FBI Director Christopher Wray turn over records of all communications and payments between the law enforcement agency and Twitter.
Jordan’s office said the release of internal Twitter files by Musk had unmasked an “ongoing surveillance operation” that exceeded FBI investigative authorities and resulted in a “coordinated misinformation effort between the FBI and Twitter to suppress and censor free speech.”
“We are investigating politicization and abuses at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives online,” Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote Wray in an oversight letter. “Newly released information shows the FBI has coordinated extensively with Twitter to censor or otherwise affect content on Twitter’s platform.”
Meanwhile, the idea of a Church-style panel has been embraced by a growing number of prominent voices.
“Hear, hear!!” Musk tweeted in response to the suggestion from venture capitalist David Sacks, who said: “We need a new Church Commission to investigate why the FBI and Intelligence Community are engaged in social media censorship, including the suppression of the Hunter Biden story.”
Kash Patel, one of the former House intelligence committee staffers who were spied on by DOJ. said a commission of respected voices can exert influence and force changes that a divided Congress cannot.
The FBI, and most of the Federal Government, should be abolished and reformed LEGALLY to adhere to our Constitution.
You can’t have authoritarian, unelected agencies paid off to rig elections and arrest opposition.
These pigs in the three letter agencies need to step down and find the honor they’ve forfeited for decades, do the right thing, and restore our democracy that they helped steal.
But that’s not going to happen. It’s funny watching Dictator Biden meet with Dictator Zelenskyy as they talk about fighting Dictator Putin.
They are all the same unelected sh*t-stains who need to step down. This war, and the dead it’s claiming, are the fruits of pride and greed. Nothing more.
Biden is a war criminal now as surely as Putin, Zelenskyy (genocide), Obama, Bush, and many others.
The only one who isn’t a war criminal is Trump. And he knows many, MANY secrets…
Ruh Roh!
The FBI is beyond the need of a commission to investigate it. It needs to be abolished. They make the Gotti crime family they broke up look like a bunch of choirboys.
Interesting….
https://famguardian.org/Subjects/Taxes/Education/16AmendNotRatified.htm
Long overdue. Unfortunately the treasonous republicans who voted with the democrats have hand tried the House republicans and any effort they may have had at defunding. That will end September 30 when the new fiscal year begins.
By then maybe some untimely accident will befall McConnell.
Consider the power the DOJ and FBI has to smother such a probe. We could see the true nature of these agencies.
But, for such an important and vital investigation, there is a question: which Democrats should be included on the committee? Or, following Pelosi’s precedent, should any? No matter what the Republicans do, the Democrats will denounce it, protecting to the death their grip on absolute and fascist power in our government. I say this investigation is far too important to allow Democrats the opportunity to sabotage it.
Much of the investigation and establishment of facts has already been done, so the conclusions should be arrived at relatively quickly and before more election fraud can end the Republican authority to head the committee.
Pick some easy targets, bring all the pressure available down upon them and make them squeal. Like the FTX case, the guilt is clear, the punishment should be severe and getting rats to turn on the ring leaders should not be that tough.
Anyone found guilty should not be allowed to resign with their pensions. That is an insult to the very idea of justice.
Are these the same people who have previously reported being probed by extraterrestrials?
Many of them are the probing extraterrestrials, bend over WRAY you shape shifting cannibalistic lizard, Hey Barr what were you doing all that time with Hunters laptop, you sicko.
No, you’re confusing them with Hunter’s buddies. Tell us, do you think it proper for the FBI and media to conspire to suppress the truth? Or, have you the guts to answer?
greg is a pussy he will not answer
Christmas truce. I wish you all a happy one.
You take us all too serious, you are our favorite troll, God bless us everyone. Who else would put up with the abuse we dish to you?
Merry Christmas!
Joyful returns. The fun is on Tuesday when the grands come for my Christmas dinner and Christmas wrap recycling.
Today its at moms Turkey and ham her house overflowing with family.
Merry Christmas!
No. Your aim to destroy Christian-based American values, and replace it with Communism.
Don’t hide behind a day, and our God, that you revile.
It’s sad there isn’t freedom of religion in Ukraine, like there is in the United States.
If it only was the FBI… Remember in 2017??? The “Resist” movement among the self-righteous liberal federal employees??? As we all should know, “Subversives are people who attempt to weaken or destroy a political system or government.” The House should look into the identity of those dumb enough to crow about it on social media and pursue it as the subversive actions they were… after 2024.
This scheme involved all members of the IC and there should be a major culling with appointed non-liberal special prosecutors , contracted from the private sector, to render those found guilty unemployable above the rank of convenience store cashier. The financial backers should be publicly tried and have their wealth confiscated to repair the damages wrought by their actions (The 2020 riots), including indemnifying the survivors of those killed by their agents in the “peaceful protests”… The major players should be banished to their native country if naturalized, or to some third world country, if a born US citizen,after purging their prison time in general population. This should be done expeditiously by specially assembled tribunals. Those in the military would have to face Court Martial with officers assembled from the Obama culling of 2012-2015…
Those who participated in the 2020 riots, as well as members and participants of Antifa actions should be allowed a 30 day period to register as “subversives” with all the consequences that entails, such as being unfit for civil (government or government funded) employment… Receive welfare or public housing, etc… States already could do this and declare Antifa a Subversive organization and prosecute those residing in the State who went/go to events out of State… as well as those who might have come into the State to incur in subversive acts. The idea would be to prosecute those who can be prosecuted, and disqualify those anarchists from participating in a society they wish to destroy. A pretrial deal might involve self deportation/banishment… if they can find a country willing to take them, with all the losses of privileges and rights usually forfeited under subversion.
This could be done…