AZ’s GOP Congress members target Biden
Biggs, Gosar both sit on House’s investigative oversight committee
Now in control of the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans have promised to hold the Biden administration accountable for its actions on a wide range of fronts, something they argue that Democrats failed to do when their party held a majority in Congress.
Much of this will take place before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, the House’s main investigative panel on which Republican Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona sit. Biggs and Gosar, who were among former President Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters on Capitol Hill, also are a couple of President Joe Biden’s most unrelenting GOP critics.
Gosar spokesperson Anthony Foti told The Arizona Republic in a written statement that Gosar “is looking forward to restoring government accountability that has been absent under the Biden regime and it begins with investigating Biden’s support for an invasion along the southern border in which the Congressman’s district is ground zero. No stone will be left unturned.”
Gosar and other House Republicans have taken heat for referring to immigration as an invasion, rhetoric embraced by white nationalists.
Among the other issues important to Gosar: Biden’s handling of classified documents, the administration’s potential interference with social media companies to restrict speech and using government agencies such as the Department of Justice and the FBI to go after political adversaries.
In a written statement, Biggs told The Republic: “The House Oversight & Accountability Committee will hold the federal government responsible for its actions. Members of the Committee will ensure that the federal government does not abuse its power over the American people. In the 118th Congress, we’ll be examining the Biden Border Crisis, the COVID response, the Biden Family, Big Tech censorship, Ukraine funding, and much more. We’ll leave no stone unturned.”
“It is very clear that the vision of the majority on the oversight committee is simply to score points against the Biden administration. And so the mission of the minority is to undercut that effort.”
John J. “Jack” Pitney Jr. Professor of government at Claremont McKenna College
What is the House oversight committee’s role?
The House oversight committee has become hyperpoliticized in recent history, but hasn’t always been that way.
“At times in the past, oversight was regarded as not particularly interesting or newsworthy. Things such as procurement reform, which is important but not attention-grabbing,” said John J. “Jack” Pitney Jr., professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and an expert on how Congress works. “It is very clear that the vision of the majority on the oversight committee is simply to score points against the Biden administration. And so the mission of the minority is to undercut that effort.”
The committee stopped being bipartisan in the 1990s during President Bill Clinton’s administration, particularly under the chairmanship of Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., Pitney said. Burton reshaped the relatively minor committee into one that drew the national spotlight by conducting high-profile investigations.
Here is more detail about the GOP-run oversight committee’s priorities and agendas.
Social media companies in the committee’s spotlight
The oversight committee on Tuesday endorsed two bills that would limit the government’s ability to assert power over Facebook and Twitter posts. One bill would ban federal government workers from using their position to prevent or modify posts that otherwise comply with protected speech under the First Amendment.
The other bill would mandate a five-year review that would document every incident in which a federal agency attempted to influence a social media company to tamper with posts that otherwise constitute protected speech.
The bills came after a February hearing that shed light on how Twitter blocked access to a New York Post article on Hunter Biden’s laptop for a full day.
Republicans contend that Twitter and Facebook have also tried to quell posts about 2020 election fraud, which to date has still not been proven, and COVID-19 theories that were once outside the mainstream.
While many in the GOP have asserted that these platforms are limiting free speech, particularly that of conservatives, some Democrats say that these companies need to be more assertive in handling posts that showcase incorrect information.
Biden’s family is another area of interest for the oversight Republicans, particularly his son, Hunter Biden. Republicans especially are interested in Hunter Biden’s laptop, which contains information that could be relevant to their probes.
They are investigating whether he profited off of his status as Joe Biden’s son in international businesses that might hurt U.S. security.
In 2019, Hunter Biden abandoned his computer he had left to be fixed in a computer body shop. The technician shared its contents with the FBI and went on to give the laptop to Rudy Giuliani, a former lawyer to Trump, who then transferred it to the police. Giuliani also shared the information on the laptop with the media.
The New York Post published a story a month before the 2020 election about emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop regarding a trip to Ukraine that Biden took when he was vice president. The emails suggested that Biden had connected with a senior employee at Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company where Hunter Biden served on its board. The meeting would have coincided with when Biden was also urging Kyiv to remove its prosecutor general, who was examining Burisma’s activities.
Biden’s campaign denied that the encounter described by the newspaper ever happened.
Burisma is of particular interest to Gosar, who said through Foti that the committee would be thorough “in investigating the Bidens being bribed by Ukraine and using fake and undisclosed ‘rent payments’ of $50,000 per month from Burisma in Ukraine.”
The oversight committee also is looking at Hunter Biden’s artwork, which has sold for up to $500,000.
In an effort to prevent ethics violations, the White House set up a process where the artwork was sold by an art gallery owner, who set the price, automatically declining offers that were well above its determined value. The owner would keep any details about buyers or potential purchases secret from the White House and Hunter Biden.
Still, the White House’s method for selling Hunter Biden’s art has drawn criticism even from Democrats.
Walter Shaub, former President Barack Obama’s top ethics expert during his second White House term, slammed the arrangement on CNN as a “really terrible idea,” telling CNN that it was relying on a private individual to do the government’s job of making sure it was complying with ethics rules on an arrangement contingent that the anonymous art buyers would not divulge their identity.
“It just is implausible that this art from an unknown artist would be selling at this price if it didn’t have the Biden name attached to it . ... And so it really looks like the president’s son capitalizing on his father’s public service,” Shaub told the news organization.
Did COVID-19 start after a lab leak?
On Feb. 27, the FBI reversed course from its initial position that COVID-19 began organically in nature, with Director Christopher Wray now saying that the disease “most likely” started from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. That same day, Rep. James Comer, R-Tenn., the oversight committee chair, sent a letter to Wray asking him to produce further records so the committee could investigate the origins of COVID-19.
The committee wants to look into whether Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s former top virologist, and Dr. Francis Collins, the previous National Institutes of Health director, deliberately misled the public over the origins of COVID-19.
The NIH, through a grant to the NGO EcoHealth Alliance, may have used public dollars to finance gainof-function research at WIV that potentially kickstarted the start of the pandemic. The controversial gainof-function research makes potential pandemic-inducing viruses more contagious so that researchers can study the disease in pursuit of a treatment.
The oversight committee also is investigating possible fraud and misappropriation of public money stemming from COVID-19-related federal initiatives, such as the Paycheck Protection Program that helped businesses stay afloat during lockdowns.
Biden, Republicans are clashing over border and immigration policies
Republicans want to exercise oversight over the Biden administration’s border policies, which they say are causing a record number of migrants coming to the border and the current border situation. Biden’s policies have broken, in part, from those of his predecessor Trump. Biden opposed building Trump’s signature border wall and the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.
Biden also did not extend Title 42, a pandemic-era border health rule that allows the government to quickly deport people here illegally because of the COVID-19 health emergency, for unaccompanied minors. However, it has argued in court that it is necessary to deport families to prevent overwhelming facilities, which are short on space and could pose a threat to public health. Additionally, while Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office that would block public spending on new sections of the border wall, his administration still has funded projects that were started before his tenure and projects to fill gaps in the wall in Arizona.
Biggs has led an effort to impeach Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his handling of the border, joined in support by Gosar and freshman Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., among others.
Poring over Ukraine aid for possible corruption and waste
The Republicans on the committee want to exercise oversight over the $113 billion in public money sent to Ukraine, as they are concerned about corruption and waste.
In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote that the government is ensuring proper use of U.S. taxpayer funds through World Bank supervision; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pledged to use American dollars in the “most responsible way.”
A Ukraine spending package was passed last year over Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) objection that there should be an inspector general to oversee the funds.
Another focus: Federal response to toxic train derailment in Ohio
Republicans on the committee also want to investigate the administration’s sluggish response to the train derailment in Ohio. The Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine resulted in the release of dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere and water. Many Republicans, including Biggs and Gosar, criticized Biden for visiting Ukraine in late February before visiting East Palestine.
It took 10 days for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to comment on the train wreck. Trump, who is running for president again, went to East Palestine on Feb. 22, a day before Buttigieg made the trip. Biden still has not visited the site.
On Feb. 24, the oversight committee chair and other representatives, including Biggs and Gosar, sent a letter to Buttigieg asking for records related to the administration’s response to the accident.
The administration has defended its response, saying it sent investigators from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation “within hours” of the accident. The White House has attributed the derailment to the Trump administration’s dismantling of safety protections instituted by former President Barack Obama. This included nixing the requirement for trains carrying a large amount of combustible material to have electronically controlled pneumatic brakes.
However, Trump’s lifting the mandatory break rule would not have prevented what happened in Ohio. The train that derailed was not transporting enough flammable matter to have ever needed compulsory ECP brakes, which the National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy acknowledged on Twitter.
Washington, D.C., crime another committee interest
Congress has outsize influence over how Washington, D.C., is run. It appropriates funding for the local government and some laws even have to be greenlit by Congress. The district does not have voting representation in Congress, but it does have a nonvoting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C.
The D.C. City Council recently revised its criminal code, lowering the sentencing time for some violent crimes. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, but the council overrode it.
The Senate passed legislation on March 8 to overturn the D.C. crime bill, the first time in more than three decades Congress overrode a law passed by the district. Biden has indicated that he will not veto the resolution.
The bipartisan resolution passed in the House last month.
Tara Kavaler is a politics reporter at The Arizona Republic. She can be reached by email at tara.kavaler@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @kavalertara.