House Republicans’ inauspicious start to ‘Benghazi 2.0’

House Republicans' priority this year is investigations — and they are, as advertised, modeled after the Church Committee. Except they will be the antithesis.

The 1975 Senate select committee, chaired by Sen. Frank Church, was a bipartisan, serious, carefully assembled investigation into alleged offenses by American intelligence agencies. It uncovered major abuses, which resulted in important reforms.

The current House panels, starting with the weirdly named “weaponization” subcommittee, are purely partisan, carelessly staffed, and have two purposes: to go after President Biden and his family ahead of the 2024 election and to vindicate Donald Trump from his many well-documented transgressions.

Both the Judiciary Committee and its “weaponization” subcommittee are chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who has promised “dozens and dozens” of whistleblowers to tell how U.S. intelligence agencies have been "weaponized" against Trump and conservatives. The third, the Oversight Committee, is chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) with Jordan the ranking Republican.

House Republicans see Jordan as the Democrats' worst nightmare. He does a James Cagney-like impersonation shedding his jacket, scowling, and making rapid-fire combative charges in the form of questions.

The record, however, suggests that Jordan is, as they say in Texas, all hat and no cattle.

Jordan was a ringleader in two Obama-era investigations. One looked into charges that the IRS was targeting conservative non-profits; it fizzled when it was revealed the agency was targeting both conservative and liberal non-profits for stretching the tax laws with their political activities. Jordan also was one of the loudest voices on the Benghazi inquest, which sought to blame then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the death of four Americans at the hands of Libyan terrorists. It was a dud.

This may be worse.

Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.), a freshman Democrat on two of these committees, was lead House Democratic counsel in the first Trump impeachment, and for ten years in U.S. Attorney's office, he prosecuted Russian mafiosos and organized crime mobsters. So far, what he sees from Jordan & Co. is they “pontificate with almost no facts or evidence.” Goldman said Jordan reminds him of a defense lawyer “who could poke some holes in the prosecutor's case but then lacks the expertise to put together his own case.”

They want to paint Trump as a victim, Goldman says, but Trump's “the albatross around their neck” with the multiple charges that the former president used intelligence and law enforcement agencies for his own personal political purposes.

Of the 35,000 FBI employees, it shouldn’t be hard to find a few disgruntled ex-agents — but anyone who has spent time with FBI personnel finds comical the notion that the bureau is populated by left-wing radicals.

In a detailed 315-page analysis, first reported by the New York Times, subcommittee Democrats said the initial witnesses — supposed whistleblowers — provided almost no specifics and had pedaled wild conspiracy charges; two had been paid by a Trump loyalist.

It's easy to see why former Democratic Sen. Gary Hart, a member of the Church committee, rejects any comparison with the weaponization panel and its partisan Republican bomb throwers: Jordan, Rep. Matt Goetz (R-Fla.), Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). They bear no resemblance to the Church Committee's stalwart conservatives, serious-minded Republicans like Barry Goldwater, John Tower and future Senate GOP leader Howard Baker.

Jim Risen, a top investigative reporter who is writing a book on the Church Committee and all the intelligence scandals it uncovered — plots to assassinate foreign leaders, eavesdropping on Americans, using journalists as CIA assets — says the Jordan effort instead “seems destined to follow the patterns” of the infamous Joe McCarthy witch hunts in the 1950s.

A priority of Jordan's full committee reportedly is to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. There are no grounds — it's just a political sop to the Trump MAGA crowd. The only time a cabinet officer was impeached in American history was President Grant's war secretary 147 years ago. During the Obama administration, Jordan wanted to impeach John Koskinen, the well-regarded IRS commissioner.

The Oversight Committee also is off to an inauspicious start. Initially, the committee held a hearing to prove that Twitter caved to political pressure and took down and blocked a story about Hunter Biden's laptop weeks before the election. Except the witnesses arguably did more damage to the GOP premise than confirming it.

Chairman Comer claims he'll be fair-minded and says it's necessary to investigate Hunter Biden, who he has pronounced guilty of something because he apparently traded on his father's famous name and connections. In a bizarre charge, Comer suggested the president's late son, Beau, should have been prosecuted years ago. Comer brushed aside Democrats' request to also investigate Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, who certainly appears to have parlayed his own White House connections to get a $2 billion investment from the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.

Comer may indeed want to be a little fair-minded – but with so many committee Republicans from the “crazy caucus” — including Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) — that's not an option.

Serious oversight is an important congressional role. In the not-too-distant past, heavyweights like Reps. John Dingell, Henry Waxman and Tom Davis, a Republican, have conducted substantive important oversight investigations. 

There are matters today's Republicans should look into: the Biden administration's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan; some fraud and abuse in the massive COVID relief funds doled out under both the Trump and Biden regimes, maybe a bi-partisan inquiry on China.

But unfortunately, House oversight will be dominated by cheap stunts by partisan grandstanders slavishly determined to get Biden and protect Trump.

Al Hunt is the former executive editor of Bloomberg News. He previously served as reporter, bureau chief and Washington editor for The Wall Street Journal. For almost a quarter century he wrote a column on politics for The Wall Street Journal, then The International New York Times and Bloomberg View. He hosts Politics War Room with James Carville. Follow him on Twitter @AlHuntDC.