At a House Rules Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Jim Jordan slammed the January 6 Committee and their subpoenaing of Steve Bannon. Here’s a partial excerpt:
“…Earlier uh, representative Cheney said: “We can have an investigation or we can let it go uninvestigated.”
I mean what, what a ridiculous statement. What, the FBI has been investigating this issue for, for the past, since it happened. Exactly where it’s supposed to have 600 people have been charged. Investigations are supposed to happen in the Executive branch. Congress has an oversight function, but Democrats don’t want to do that.
They don’t want to ask the appropriate questions, like why was the security posture so weak that day? Why wasn’t the National Guard here? They don’t want to ask those questions. Instead, the actions of the January Sixth Committee, I believe, are a complete assault on Americans’ liberty. There have been four batches of subpoenas issued, four batches. The one we’re talking about today, Mr. Bannon, Mr. Meadows, Mr. Patel, Mr. Scovino.
Second. second one to Mr. Clark, employee DOJ, former employee at DOJ. The third batch to organizers of some other rally, I didn’t know about that happened that day. And then there’s been subpoenas addition to eleven individuals, eleven American citizens, who asked the government for permission on an application to hold the Trump rally. Think about this, they put their names on a application the government asked them to do that, they give that application the government, the government granted it, and now the January Sixth Committee petitions them to ask them questions about exercising their First Amendment right to assemble.
Here’s what they ask them about, Here’s what they ask them about: Subpoena to those individuals, eleven individuals, includes a demand for agenda and selection of speakers for the rally. They ask them for coordination of the speaker’s respective speeches, discussions of content, and they ask them, think about this, communications with, or concerning any member of Congress.
So if some of these individuals happen to talk to a member of Congress exercising their First Amendment liberty to petition their government to redress their grievances, wow the January Sixth Committee wants to depose them on those kinds of things. Some of these individuals are twenty some year old staffers, I mean this is largely a clerical thing. They filled out this application, setting out chairs, escorting people to their seats, plugging in microphones. No, no they’re gonna, they’re gonna go after them, even though, even though this the investigation the FBI is doing says find scan evidence of any type of coordination. Here’s where it says: ‘Violence was not centrally coordinated, this is, this is the Reuters story. Oh and here’s the source, here’s the source on that story: ‘Senior lawmakers have been briefed in detail on the results of the FBI’s investigation so far find them credible.’ A Democrat Congressional source said. So there is an investigation going on? Where it’s supposed to happen in the Executive branch?
Oh I forgot, One other thing, that January Sixth Committee has done that. I believe is a direct attack on liberty. They’ve sent letters to the carriers, the tech companies asking that they press for hundreds and hundreds of Americans, according to news reports, asking that they preserve all communications of that individual for the past six months. And they told these, they told these companies: ‘Oh by the way, don’t let the person we’re telling you to preserve information for, don’t let them know like the law requires; don’t let them know that we’ve asked you to do this. And if you feel compelled to follow the law and tell them that this January says that government is asking for this information to be preserved if you feel competitive tell us first – The old gag order concept. This is this is this is scary, where they want to go and what they’re doing to Americans’ Constitutional rights.
And finally I would ask is this sort of fundamental question: How can you expect witnesses to participate when you wouldn’t let Republicans participate in the committee? How can you do that?…”
Lock and load.