My own perspective on the challenge is somewhat conflicted. On one hand the scale of addressing the issue of this size doesn’t fit the traditional model of legislative oversight. On the other hand, this entire process is the only one available that conforms to the role of government oversight.
I have previously outlined the scale of the opposition the House Subcommittee faces and will face. Knowing the size of the opposition, you can make an argument that it takes a long time to prepare for this battle. However, the issues raised by Mike Davis are fair and legitimate.
I am cynical about congress’s ability, given the scope of the effort required. However, we live our best life and remain pragmatically hopeful. If they have genuine intent, we will all benefit. The only thing we can do is provide proactive input and advice; ultimately, it is up to the republicans in congress to determine if this is their priority.
BACKGROUND – The 118th Congress has authorized a “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.” The subcommittee falls under the jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee led by Chairman Jim Jordan. Additionally, Thomas Massie (R-KY) is being reported as a representative under consideration for the chairmanship of the House Subcommittee.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan should have a grasp of the scale and scope of the opposition they are about to face. Assuming they have a fully prepared staff to support them – willing to take on a very consequential investigation; then we begin by first anticipating who will oppose their effort to investigate the “weaponization of government“. Which is to say, everyone!
The defensive apparatus of the DC political system will likely do everything in their power, individually and with collective assistance, to ensure this committee fails. The stakes are quite high. As readers here can well attest, DC politics is an institutional system of purposefully created compartmentalized silos.
The compartmented information silos permit plausible deniability, and this collection of weaponized institutions contains career bureaucrats who view their opposition as the American people.
Example – The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and every Republican member therein, including SSCI Vice-Chairman Marco Rubio, will make it their willfully blind priority to obstruct any investigation that touches on how the intelligence apparatus of the United States Government is weaponized against the people.
The SSCI is the institution that facilitated the creation of the National Security State. Any effort to investigate the outcome of that system will make the House investigators adversarial to their colleagues in the Senate.
Additionally, every executive branch intelligence institution, including the DOJ-NSD, FBI, DHS, ODNI, CIA, DoD, DIA, NSC and every sub-agency within their authorities, will do anything and everything to block a subcommittee looking into their domestic activity.
A lot of bad decisions have led to really bad things. DC does not want those bad things discussed.
Every national security justification that exists, and some that have yet to be created by the DOJ National Security Division solely for the expressed interest of blocking this subcommittee, will be deployed.
Every member of the subcommittee and their staff will be under constant surveillance. Phones will be tapped and tracked, electronic devices monitored, cars and offices bugged, physical surveillance deployed, and top tier officials at every subsidiary agency of the U.S. government will assign investigative groups and contract agents to monitor the activity of the subcommittee and provide weekly updates on their findings.
The White House together with the National Security Council will also backchannel to and from these agencies doing the surveillance.
The intelligence apparatus media will be deployed, and daily leaks from the various agencies to their contact lists in the New York Times, Politico, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC will be in constant two-way communication for narrative assembly and counterpropaganda efforts.
This is the context of opposition to begin thinking about before anything moves forward.
Additionally, the national security state will demand the House investigation take place on their terms. They will demand secrecy, national security classification and require House subcommittee members to adhere to the Intelligence Community terms for review and discussion of anything.
Each agency will not voluntarily assist or participate in the investigation of any of their conduct. Every official within every agency will do the same; and they will require legal representation that will be provided to them by Lawfare, political operatives skilled in the use of “National Security” and “classified information”, as a justification for non-compliance and non-assistance. A protracted legal battle should be predicted.
Lastly, anticipate Special Counsel Jack Smith using his position to block the House Subcommittee from receiving evidence. The House should anticipate that congressional representatives are already under investigation as a result of the authorities granted to Jack Smith by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco {Go Deep}. The White House and all of the executive branch agencies will use the existing Special Counsel to block House investigation. Heck, that looks to be the primary purpose of the appointment.
As a result, expect the House Subcommittee members to be under constant threat from the DOJ, via the Special Counsel, specifically from DAG Lisa Monaco, with statements that House Subcommittee investigative efforts are “obstructing” a special counsel investigation. The aforementioned agencies and the Senate Intel Committee will work with the DOJ to use the Jack Smith special counsel as a shield to block participation with the House Subcommittee.
With all of that in mind, what is the successful path forward?
♦ First, everything has to be done in sunlight and maximum transparency, even the planning and organization of the committee construct, purpose and goals.
The committee can have no shadow operations, unknown guiding hands or secrets that can be discovered and then weaponized against the intent. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
I know DC has little concept of working like this, but you can train yourself to do it. You have nothing to hide; however, those who are being investigated have everything to hide. Do not provide them ammunition by retaining secrets that can be weaponized against you.
As Andrew Breitbart said, be open with your secrets.
Your second cousin Alice will be a source for the New York Times to write about the Thanksgiving dinner three years ago when she heard the “N” word or a tasteless joke about something outrageous. Every member of the committee and staff need to prepare for a dossier completed by the FBI about them and distributed to the government allies in mainstream media.
Security clearances will be leveraged and threatened as a tool of the national security state to stop the secrecy envelope from being opened publicly. This will happen; so just anticipate it. When the security clearance of [insert_name_here] is threatened, go to the microphones and tell the public who is doing the threatening, and why.
♦GOALS – The goal needs to be crystal clear to anyone and everyone who would contemplate assisting. Yes, there needs to be a legislative intent in order to legally formulate the committee; that’s a no-brainer. However, the ultimate goal should NOT BE accountability on those who may have perpetrated or supported weaponized activity against American Citizens. The ultimate goal SHOULD BE for maximum public information, transparency and sunlight about the weaponization as it is discovered.
Let us assume the goal is accepted. Before moving forward, the subcommittee needs a professional communication strategy in place before the rules, terms and member outlines are structured or made public.
A thoughtful communication strategy so that information can come from the committee to the public without the filtration of a corrupt system that will bend and skew the findings as a weapon against the committee itself.
♦COMMUNICATION PORTAL – Hire a communication staff, and set up a website for the sharing of information directly from the committee to the public. The daily activity of the committee should be shared publicly in granular detail. The witness names as scheduled, documents requested, everything that involves the committee activity should be known to the general public. This system should be updated at least DAILY, or as information is compiled.
This communication network should also contain a separate staff assigned to solicit, accept and distribute information provided by the public to the subcommittee. Yes, you read that correctly, the subcommittee website should be able to accept information provided by the public as it relates to the ongoing committee work.
Crowdsource We The People as research leverage against the much more effective Lawfare operations you will face in opposition. This means a portal where the ‘open source’ information can be delivered by researchers, many of those on the spectrum, who hold deep knowledge of the information and system processes in the silos.
In the past several years, thousands of documents have been retrieved by FOIA and public records investigations. Hundreds of experts in the granular details of the DHS, FBI, DoD and DOJ-NSD systems have knowledge that can benefit the committee; you just need a way for them to transmit the evidence/information to you.
That ‘open source’ evidence should flow into the committee portal with address sourcing that allows the committee staff to review and locate it independently. This avoids the predictable counterargument, from the national security state, that Russia (or foreign actors) is feeding disinformation into the committee.
The documentary evidence will mostly be “open source,” extracted and then cross-referenced from within the multiple silo system the national security state uses as a shield. And the origination of the documents will be traceable and easy to duplicate, thereby providing secure provenance. The internal staff manager for this inbound portal is critical (think former HPSCI Nunes staff).
Documents found by the committee should then be uploaded to the same communication system (website), permitting the public -especially the autists- to review and then cross reference the committee material; ultimately channeling information back into the committee if important dots connect or puzzle pieces clarify. Think of this as a massive counter Lawfare operation with hundreds of Deep State subject matter experts assisting the committee.
Witness transcripts should be uploaded within 36 hours of testimony. Then let the public do the research, background review and dot connecting from the testimony. If you build it, they will come.
♦ Next, GO PUBLIC with everything. Do not use the terms and conditions of the secretive administrative state. Tell the public what you are finding as you are finding it. You can share information without violating “sources and methods.” Schedule a media appearance at the 8pm hour twice weekly with a high visibility broadcast media network to provide updates and answer questions.
These scheduled appearances should be in addition to random media press releases and press comments as pertinent information to the subcommittee arrives. What this means is that you do not wait to produce a 2,000-page final report before releasing the information. The final report should be an update and summary of all previous findings that have been released to the public along the way.
♦ At the outset, put no rules on media contacts with any subcommittee staff or member. Counter the darkness that fuels the intelligence community agenda with maximum sunlight and transparency. Use truth as a weapon against disinformation. That means no nondisclosure agreements at any part of the process.
Yes, this is radical change in approach, but this is also a radical enemy you are facing. Playing the secrecy game works in their favor, not yours. Transparency is your tool, not theirs – use it.
Use truth as a weapon.
Every member of the committee can say anything they want about any of the material or witness testimony they hear during the course of the investigation. Public hearing or closed-door sessions, it matters not. The same rule applies. Committee members are completely free to discuss any findings as the information is reviewed.
The goal should NOT BE accountability on those who may have perpetrated or supported weaponized activity against American Citizens. The goal SHOULD BE for maximum public information, transparency and sunlight about the weaponization as it is discovered. This approach makes We The People the accountability portion of the process. As a result, the next section is again rather groundbreaking….
♦ Every witness to the committee should be granted full legal immunity provided by the House and House Speaker for anything said during the testimony or admitted as being done as part of the evidence fact-finding. Again, the goal is transparency and openness, not prosecution and accountability. Use sunlight as a weapon to draw out the truth, then let the American people be the judges of what that truth means when contrasted against the constitution of our nation.
Let me repeat this… There should be ZERO legal liability for any conduct that happened as a part of any witness effort to weaponize the United States government against the American people. The immunity should cover everything *except* perjury from the witness to the committee itself (ex. Oliver North). If the witness lies, the immunity evaporates.
Why this approach? Because (a) it circumvents any issues that might impede testimony, removes hurdles; (b) immunity compels confession, honest sunlight and the urgency of the situation; (c) immunity makes the truth more likely; and finally, (d) you are not going to get legal convictions anyway. The truth has no agenda.
Another reason for the immunity is because the operation of the subcommittee should be heavily focused on witness testimony, not documents. The documents can come as part of the follow-up to the witness testimony, but it is the witness testimony needed; the publication of the transcripts then provides the public sunlight. This is key.
90% of the committee work should be focused on witnesses and questions therein. Only 10% of the committee work should be seeking documents. Avoiding the documents shortens the time needed for investigative disclosures and avoids protracted legal battles therein. If the people on the committee, those who are asking the questions, do not already know the details behind the questions and the locations of the supportive documents, then you have the wrong people on the committee.
Every response to a questioned witness should come with the following question: “How do you know this?” That is how you will discover the nature of the documents, communications, emails etc that support the fact-finding mission. “How do you know this” also leads to more witnesses. Work the issue from the bottom up. How do you know this; who told you this; why did you do this; what authority guided you; who authorized this approach? etc. etc. etc.
Use fully immunized witnesses to tell the story, then go look for the documents to corroborate the witness statements using the ‘under oath’ transcript as part of the impenetrable subpoena itself; but don’t wait, keep questioning witnesses.
♦DOCUMENTS – Once you identify the location of documents that would assist the sunlight objective, don’t only rely on the government side of the conversation as the targeted source for retrieval. If the document contains communication to external parties, ie public-private partnership, then move to gain the documents from the private side, thereby avoiding the roadblocks inside government.
Regardless of the status of the document search, and regardless of whether legal battles will be needed to retrieve those documents, keep moving forward with the witness testimony. Do not stop committee work just because internal silo opposition is being fought. Keep working the plan and bringing immunized witnesses, both inside government and outside government, forward for questioning. Leaders within organizations and agencies are important, but clerks, staff, and administrative aides in/around those same leaders could also provide important information.
This subcommittee approach, along with the people needed, will obviously take more time to assemble. However, once put together everything thereafter moves at a very rapid pace, which is also part of the strategy. Flood the information zone with maximum sunlight and keep the opposition off balance.
The goal is sunlight. Rip the Band-Aid off, call the baby ugly and start the process to fix this crap by exposing it. Restore the First and Fourth Amendments, and heal the injury.
From the Church Commission we got the secret FISA court and more tools for violations of our Fourth Amendment rights. From the 911 Commission we got The Patriot Act, DHS, TSA, DNI and many more violations of our rights and Fourth Amendment protections. We do not need any legislation as an outcome of the House “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.”
We do not need your legislative help. All prior legislative help only ended up making things worse.
What we need is a full, uncensored, brutally honest expose’ of how bad things have become and how that system can be dismantled. The existing constitution is the protection, just remove the stuff that is violating it.
I know this approach is rather different from the norm. However, if this roadmap seems reasonable, I am certain you will find support from within the silo system that is currently operating, and from people outside the government who will volunteer time and effort to assist.
Summarized: (1) Know the scale of opposition. (2) Formulate a communication strategy around it and build a website. (3) Communicate findings by telling the story to the American people as it is discovered. (4) Grant immunity to all witnesses. (5) Don’t wait until the end to generate another useless report that few will read. (6) Make sunlight the motive of the committee. (7) Consider success when the American people can see the problem. (8) Dissolve any weaponized systems. (9) Don’t create new ones.
If you tell us the truth, We The People will fix it ourselves.
