GOP starts ‘weaponization’ probe
Republicans cite bias in government, media
WASHINGTON — House Republicans launched the marquee investigation of their new majority Thursday, drawing in current and former lawmakers to make a sprawling case that national security officials, social media companies and the media have been conspiring against conservatives.
The first hearing of the new House panel on what Republicans assert is the “weaponization” of government is being led by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.
“It’s clear to me that the Justice Department and the FBI are suffering from a political infection that, if it’s not defeated, will cause the American people to no longer trust these storied institutions,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in his testimony to the committee.
Republicans attributed their claims of weaponization to private interviews with dozens of whistleblowers over the last two years, when they were in the minority.
In response, Democrats brought in Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD., a member of the Jan. 6 committee that disbanded last year, to make the opposite argument that it is congressional Republicans, not the federal government, who are weaponizing their oversight and investigative power, but against civil servants in the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, House Republicans made the first official requests Thursday for documents from Hunter and James Biden regarding their foreign business dealings, further escalating a wide-ranging investigation into the president’s family.
A lawyer for Hunter Biden dismissed the request Thursday as an effort by Rep. James Comer to peddle his own “inaccurate and baseless conclusions under the guise of a real investigation.”