House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government a worthy descendent of the House Un-American Activities Committee
First hearing ignores the Trump elephant in the living room.
The federal government was weaponized on an industrial scale by President Donald Trump to attack his critics and to defend his cronies and sycophants.
He fired or demoted every detractor of his transparent attempt to trade arms in exchange for the Ukrainian President’s agreement to announce a corruption investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden. He moved heaven and earth to have high level Justice Department or FBI officials replaced for investigating credible allegations of criminal wrongdoing of Mr. Trump or his 2016 presidential campaign committee. He pardoned Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Michael Flynn for their tacit agreement to conceal their knowledge of Trump’s illegalities. He attempted to enjoin publication of the memoir of his former national security advisor John Bolton which, among other things, described obstruction of justice as a “way of life” at Trump’s White House. He refused to summon federal military or police forces to stop the January 6, 2021, violent insurrection against the Capitol aiming to “Hang Mike Pence” for the Vice President’s refusal to capitulate to Trump’s vulgar harangues to repudiate his obligation to count state-certified electoral votes for the President in 2020.
President Trump weaponized the federal government hoping to install himself as dictator for life consistent with his July 23, 2019, pronunciamento, “Then I have Article 2, where I have the right to do anything I want as president.”
The House Select Subcommittee held its maiden hearing last Thursday. But it had no time for investigating the most alarming weaponization of the federal government in more than two centuries to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power by force, violence, and death threats against Vice President Pence, his wife, and children. Instead, the Subcommittee fixated on fleas.
Former Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), and presidential aspirant whined that her fear of bio labs in Ukraine investigating pathogens had been mischaracterized as asserting United States funding of Ukrainian bioweapons labs. Ms. Gabbard had ready access to a social media outlet to flag the misunderstanding. Nobody was shaking in their boots after her whining.
Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) was summoned to manufacture Cuban Missile Crisis-like fear by taking a page from the Third Reich’s Joseph Goebbels: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
The Senator testified to a cycloptic conspiracy embracing “most members of the mainstream media, Big Tech, social media giants, global institutions and foundations, Democratic Party operatives and elected officials,” working “in concert” with “corrupt officials within federal agencies” to defeat their political opponents and promote left-wing ideology and government control over our lives.” Mr. Johnson, predictably, proffered not a crumb of admissible evidence to substantiate his imaginative accusation. The putative conspiracy was anemic because it did not prevent Republicans from capturing control of the House. The Senator should have been reminded of words credited to Sgt. Joe Friday on Dragnet: “Just the facts, ma’am.”
Subcommittee witnesses alleged that ordinary citizens are treated as “domestic terrorists” by the federal government for raising questions at school board meetings, but no victims were identified.
Do these trivialities and the like deserve a Select Committee to turn fleas into elephants?
The Committee is an extension of the President Trump more than 60 fact-free lawsuits seeking to overturn the state-certified results of the 2020 presidential election for which several Trump lawyers have been sanctioned. Rudy Giuliani’s law license has been suspended in New York.
The Subcommittee’s Republicans are clowns whose talents are suited for a circus not for Congress. One juvenile Subcommittee hearing was more than enough. Stop the hemorrhaging.