House Republicans have not been slow in fulfilling their promises to dive into a lot of the issues that have troubled many Americans for the past two years.
We saw some fireworks at the House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday when the lawmakers were grilling former Twitter executives over suppression on Twitter, in particular the story of the Hunter Biden laptop. We saw Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) drop the receipts for contact the Biden team had with Twitter to get tweets suppressed. We also saw things like the damning admission from the former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth admitting it would not be surprising if “visibility filters” were applied to the Twitter accounts of elected officials. The present owner of Twitter, Elon Musk followed up on Roth’s testimony by tweeting that it shouldn’t be surprising to Roth, since he was responsible for some of it.
Thursday was the first day of the new Weaponization Committee that is looking into how the government–including such institutions as the FBI, which is supposed to be an objective law enforcement agency–has been politicized and “weaponized” against political opponents.
Jordan started by praising the FBI whistleblowers who had come forward to provide them with the truth of what has been going on, which Jordan said was unprecedented in his time in Congress.
Jordan listed some of the things the whistleblowers had told them, touching on many stories that we have reported on over the past couple of years, and explaining some of the retaliation that had been taken against the whistleblowers for talking.
Nov. 18, 2021 – FBI whistleblower discloses to the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI created a “threat tag” for parents voicing their concerns at school board meetings.
April 26, 2022 – FBI whistleblower discloses FBI agents being run out of the bureau for attending conservative political events.
May 11, 2022 – FBI whistleblower discloses dozens of parents, whose names had the threat tag attached to them, were investigated by the FBI. The same whistleblower says FBI leadership is “rotted at its core.” His clearance has been revoked, and he’s been suspended.
June 7, 2022 – FBI whistleblower retaliated against after giving feedback on an anonymous survey.
July 27, 2022 – FBI whistleblower says agents were pressured to reclassify cases as “domestic violence extremism” cases to hit their performance metrics.
September 14, 2022 – FBI whistleblower discloses that the FBI views the Betsy Ross flag as a terrorist symbol.
September 19, 2022 – FBI whistleblower says Washington field office is deliberately manipulating Jan. 6 case files to suggest that domestic violence extremism is on the rise. He’s been suspended.
Nov. 4, 2022 – FBI whistleblower discloses that the FBI accesses private user information from Facebook without the user’s consent, and information is only from the conservative side of the political spectrum.
Jordan said this was only a “sampling” of what they had been told.
“In my time in Congress, I have never seen anything like this,” Jordan declared. “Dozens and dozens of whistleblowers, FBI agents coming to us, talking to us about what’s going in the political nature at the Justice Department.” It was not him or Republicans saying this, Jordan explained, it was “good, brave FBI agents who were willing to come forward and give us the truth.”
Just that small sampling shows the depth of the problem, and how much it’s going to take to root it out. It’s more than a little scary that this is what has come to pass at what used to be a premier law enforcement bureau–to be so used against political opponents and the American people. It’s going to need all new leadership to clean it up.