GOP creates committees for probes
Discovery of files in Biden’s former office spurs call for review
WASHINGTON — House Republicans moved Tuesday to swiftly establish the marquee investigations of their new majority, voting to create panels focused on China and what they assert is rampant abuse of power in the federal government.
Newly empowered, GOP lawmakers are vowing to bring accountability to the Biden administration, pledging to investigate federal law enforcement agencies, including those that are conducting probes into former President Donald Trump.
Republicans are also establishing a committee to investigate “strategic competition” between the U.S. and China, in line with the party’s push for a more hardline approach to the Asian nation.
Also Tuesday, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee requested that the U.S. intelligence community conduct a “damage assessment” of potentially classified documents found in the Washington office space of President Joe Biden’s former institute.
Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio sent the request to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, saying that Biden’s retention of the documents put him in “potential violation of laws protecting national security, including the Espionage Act and Presidential Records Act.”
The request came a day after the White House confirmed that the Department of Justice was reviewing
“a small number of documents with classified markings.” The documents were discovered in a locked closet on Nov. 2, 2022, as Biden’s personal attorneys were clearing out the offices of the Penn Biden Center, where the president kept an office after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his presidential campaign in 2019, the White House said.
Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said the attorneys immediately alerted the White House Counsel’s office, which notified the National Archives and Records Administration
— which took custody of the documents the next day.
A person who is familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it publicly said Attorney General Merrick Garland asked U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to review the matter after the Archives referred the issue to the department. Lausch is one of the few U.S. attorneys to be held over from Trump’s administration.
The revelation that Biden potentially mishandled classified or presidential records could prove to be a political
headache for the president, who called Trump’s decision to keep hundreds of such records at his private club in Florida “irresponsible. ”
FBI agents in August served a search warrant at the Mar-a-Lago property, removing 33 boxes and containers, and prosecutors have interviewed Trump associates, presenting evidence to a grand jury.
Republicans sought to portray the documents as an example of what they say is a disparity in government investigations that is biased against conservatives.
“Is the White House going to be raided tonight?
Are they going to raid the Bidens?” Rep. James Comer, the new GOP chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asked reporters Monday. “This is further concern that there’s a two-tiered justice system within the DOJ with how they treat Republicans versus Democrats, certainly how they treat the former president versus the current president.”
Republicans officially labeled one of the committees they created Tuesday as reviewing “the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” a name that from the outset suggests the panel’s investigations may be one-sided. The probe will be conducted under the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee, which is headed by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a hardliner who is a close ally of Trump.
The committee is being given a broad mandate, told to investigate “the expansive role” of the executive branch to “collect information on or otherwise investigate citizens of the United States, including ongoing criminal investigations.” Notably, the panel will have access to classified information, a privilege usually reserved for the intelligence committees in the House and Senate.
First up is investigating what they call a coordinated effort by Justice Department “to go after parents” and deem them domestic terrorists following an increase of threats targeting school board members, teachers and other employees in the nation’s public schools.
Democrats opposed the creation of the committee, calling it a partisan tool for Republicans to go after the Justice Department as Trump is the subject of several federal criminal investigations, including for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and his handling and storing of presidential records at Mar-aLago.
“Republicans claim to care about law enforcement. But this new committee is about attacking law enforcement,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Rules Committee, said on the House floor. “It’s about going after people. It’s about destroying people’s careers and lives. It’s about undermining the Department of Justice.”