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Republican Rep. Jim Jordan and his team couldn’t have been pleased when they saw the headline on an Axios report. “Jim Jordan scrambles amid claims ‘weaponization’ probe is a dud,” it read.
As a rule, politicians leading multifaceted partisan crusades try to avoid words such as “dud.”
Unfortunately for the Ohio congressman, however, such talk has become unavoidable. For example, a lot of planning went into the opening hearing of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which Jordan leads. As we’ve discussed, it was nevertheless an embarrassing display: Republicans whined about old grievances without presenting new information and invited witnesses who weren’t in a position to shed light on the issue at hand.
“Clearly there is room to grow and improve before [more] public hearings,” a Republican insider told Rolling Stone soon after.
Things went from bad to worse last week when the Judiciary Committee’s Democratic members released a 316-page report showing that Jordan’s FBI “whistleblowers” aren’t actually whistleblowers, and their recent behind-the-scenes testimony was literally unbelievable.
The right is clearly feeling antsy about the whole endeavor. On Steve Bannon’s program yesterday, a conservative guest described the “weaponization” committee as “a failure,” adding, “Jim Jordan is just not a serious person.” This came on the heels of a Twitter thread from Mike Davis, former chief counsel for nominations for then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican. “Jordan is overextended and short-staffed, biting off much more than he can chew,” Davis wrote. “This is doomed to fail.”
None of this has escaped the attention of the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who’s also leading the “weaponization” panel. In fact, Jordan sounded quite defensive in new comments to Semafor.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio has heard the criticisms — including on Fox News — that his subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government has yet to uncover much. He doesn’t see it that way. “I feel like our staff is working their tail off and we’re getting things up and rolling,” Jordan told Semafor in an exclusive interview.
In the same interview, the Ohioan noted new subpoenas, promised more hearings, and pointed to more “whistleblowers,” all while bragging that his panel’s staff had “more than doubled” to 50 people.
But there’s a specific detail that the chairman doesn’t seem to fully appreciate.
When GOP lawmakers first created this select subcommittee, a New York Times report said the Republicans’ goal was to “scrutinize what they said was a concerted effort by the government to silence and punish conservatives at all levels.” That, in a nutshell, is the whole point: Jordan and other far-right lawmakers seem to genuinely believe that the levers of power have been used to target conservatives, and this panel intends to expose the nefarious plots and the federal officials behind them.
But there are no plots. There’s been no “concerted effort by the government to silence and punish conservatives at all levels.” The “weaponization” committee is chasing a mirage.
It would be no more productive for House Republicans to create a select subcommittee to investigate Bigfoot. They could hire dozens of investigators, depose countless witnesses, hold hours of hearings, and send out a steady stream of subpoenas, but in the end, things that don’t exist can’t be found.
The problem isn’t just that Jordan’s flailing panel is failing, it’s that it simply cannot succeed.