Church Committee 2.0?
In 1975, the first Church Committee, named after the chair of the committee, Frank Church (Senator, ID), investigated through a series of hearings the “legality of intelligence operations by the CIA, NSA, and FBI, including attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, spying on Martin Luther King, Jr., and monitoring the political activities of other US citizens.” (1) Today, given the recent revelations of potential corrupt activities of some of the same governmental institutions, as well as some additional departments, such as DHS and DOJ, there are calls to set up another stand-alone, Church-like committee to do investigations of those departments.
The Judiciary Committee of Congress has the rights and responsibilities to investigate and “hold people in government accountable for failing to do their jobs or politicizing efforts” (2). Within the last week, we have learned that a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, called the Weaponization of the Federal Government, will be chaired by Representative Jim Jordan (Ohio).
Potential areas of investigation could include:
COVID-19, such as:
Gain-of-function research
Origin of COVID-19
Vilification of knowledgeable and competent scientist “who were advocating for a rational, traditional pandemic management policy”
Vaccine and related mandates without “medical data backing up its efficacy, it long-term effects, and its effect on children.
Shelter-in-Place mandates
Alleged FBI/DOJ coordination and collusion with Big Tech as Twitter, YouTube, Google, Facebook, and others to censor Americans and to possibly rig presidential elections.
Russiagate and potential FISA abuses
President Biden’s possession of classified documents from the Obama-Biden years.
Changes made to the border policy and the lack of use of governmental agencies, such as DHS, FBI, and DOD, especially as it relates to possible terrorists having entered our nation through the now very porous border (2)
and Hunter Biden’s laptop and why it was not investigated in December 2019 when computer repair store owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, turned it over to the FBI having found alleged illegal activities on the laptop (3)
Leading into the November elections, the Republicans candidates promised more transparency; we as Americans will be watching and holding them to their promises.
Sources:
(1) 40 years ago, Church Committee investigated Americans spying on Americans (brookings.edu) May 6, 2015
(2) Kash’s Corner: Biden’s Classified Documents Must Be Added to Investigation List of New Committee on Weaponization of Federal Government (theepochtimes.com) January 13, 2023
(3) https://twitter.com/lwoodhouse/status/1613272194095919104?s=20&t=vhU4hq7PGFPP43ftInvr8w (January 14, 2023)
Other interesting articles not used for this post related to Original Church Committee and the New Subcommittee:
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1611820363448467456?s=20&t=vhU4hq7PGFPP43ftInvr8w (January 11, 2023)
House Approves GOP Inquiry Into ‘Weaponization’ of Government - The New York Times (nytimes.com) (January 10, 2023)