Taibbi And Shellenberger Testify Before House ‘Weaponization’ Panel

Taibbi And Shellenberger Testify Before House ‘Weaponization’ Panel


Taibbi And Shellenberger Testify Before House ‘Weaponization’ Panel

mobile-logo

Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger are testifying before the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government today. Both journalists were involved in the ‘Twitter Files’ disclosures, in which we learned that the government was directly involved in censoring disfavorable speech.

“Our findings are shocking,” writes Shellenberger at his blog. “A highly-organized network of U.S. government agencies and government contractors has been creating blacklists and pressuring social media companies to censor Americans, often without them knowing it.”

Ahead of the appearance, Taibbi released his prepared remarks. He also dropped a new and related Twitter Files mega-thread on ‘THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX’ which will be submitted to the Congressional record which, according to Taibbi, ‘contains some surprises.’

Continue reading…

Header featured image (edited) credit:

Emphasis added by (TLB) editors

••••

••••

Stay tuned to …

••••

The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)

••••

Comment Policy: As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. This also applies to trolling, the use of more than one alias, or just intentional mischief. Enforcement of this policy is at the discretion of this websites administrators. Repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without prior warning.

••••

Disclaimer: TLB websites contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, health, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.

••••

Disclaimer: The information and opinions shared are for informational purposes only including, but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material are not intended as medical advice or instruction. Nothing mentioned is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Source

Exclusive — Harriet Hageman After Border Trip: Mayorkas Is ‘Violating the Oath of Office’

Exclusive — Harriet Hageman After Border Trip: Mayorkas Is ‘Violating the Oath of Office’

Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) delivered a scathing rebuke of President Joe Biden’s border chief on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday after returning from a congressional visit to Yuma, Arizona.

Hageman, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said that because Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has “abdicated his responsibilities,” bringing impeachment articles against him is “very likely.”

“I do believe that it’s very likely that there will be articles of impeachment brought against Mayorkas,” Hageman said. “And the reason being, he’s completely abdicated his responsibilities as the head of the Department of Homeland Security, and he is violating the oath of office that he took to protect this country from enemies, both foreign and domestic.”

Listen:

Hageman added, “He is not carrying out his obligations or responsibilities on the border. He needs to be held accountable for that and others do as well.”

Hageman’s comments come after Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Pat Fallon (R-TX) have already introduced articles of impeachment, and after GOP leaders, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), have conveyed an openness to investigating Mayorkas for impeachment-level breaches of duty.

The Judiciary Committee, as well as potentially other committees, would first have to conduct impeachment inquiries before Judiciary and subsequently the full House would then need to vote on impeachment articles.

Impeaching a cabinet member has not occurred in nearly 150 years, a testament to how egregiously inadequate Republicans feel Mayorkas has been at carrying out his job.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - May 4: Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas responds to lawmakers questions during a senate subcommittee hearing on homeland security at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. on May 4, 2022. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas responds to lawmakers’ questions during a hearing in Washington, DC, on May 4, 2022. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/Washington Post via Getty Images)

Millions of migrants have flooded across the border illegally under Mayorkas’s watch. U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows border officials have encountered nearly five million migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally since January 2021, a number that does not include the estimated one million “got-aways,” i.e., those who have crossed over undetected.

“I come from a state of 560,000 people,” said Hageman, who represents Wyoming’s sole at-large congressional district. “More than ten times the population of Wyoming have crossed that border illegally in the last two years.”

Hageman, noting the “huge unintended consequences” of illegal migration, such as the burden it places on Americans’ wages, housing costs, and hospitals, said she was “getting to the point” where she feels the Biden administration has intentionally allowed the ongoing border crisis to perpetuate.

“There are huge unintended consequences — or maybe they’re intended,” she said. “I’m getting to the point where this administration has been told enough about these issues that they should know better, that they do know better, and so you have to start questioning whether … the miserable policies that are being pursued are intentional.”

Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.

Source

Weaponization Committee Republicans Lay Groundwork for Investigations

Weaponization Committee Republicans Lay Groundwork for Investigations

Republicans on the newly created Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government met for the first time Friday to begin mapping out their investigative pursuits.

The closed-door meeting included all of the subcommittee’s GOP members, aside from Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL), who was home recovering from a serious accident, according to a source present at the meeting.

“There’s a lot for us to do. That’s really clear, and that’s just in the course of the discussion we had,” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) said as he emerged from the meeting room.

The subcommittee was established via a resolution this month along partisan lines and was given sweeping authority to investigate federal government agencies, such as the Justice Department (DOJ) and FBI, for alleged civil liberties violations.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) noted to reporters after the meeting, however, that the subcommittee’s mandate was “much broader” than those two agencies.

“Obviously Twitter was weaponized, and that’s not DOJ only,” Issa said.

Judiciary Committee and subcommittee chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who met with Twitter CEO Elon Musk this week, has said he plans to delve into the “Twitter files,” which, among their many revelations, showed an elaborate coordination between the FBI and the social media platform in the leadup to the 2020 election and beyond.

Jordan has also been vocal about his intentions to investigate the several whistleblower complaints he has vetted over the past year, including complaints related to DOJ’s past handling of tensions at school board meetings, its approach to January 6 investigations, and other concerns about department bias.

While it is unclear if those probes will take place through the Judiciary Committee or the new subcommittee, Issa said after the Republicans’ meeting Friday that they had already scheduled “several” transcribed interviews.

“I would imagine that we will be, like most investigation committees, disproportionately doing transcribed interviews and depositions. … It’s not about showing to the public,” Issa said, emphasizing the word “showing.” “It’s about real investigation, and then making it public,” Issa said.

UNITED STATES - MAY 17: Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., testifies during the House Rules Committee hearing to consider the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022 and the Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act, in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, May 17, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Rep. Darrell Issa speaks during a hearing in the U.S. Capitol on May 17, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Jordan told Republicans during the meeting Friday, according to a report from CNN, that the subcommittee also planned to adopt a rule used by former Oversight Committee chair Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) to issue subpoenas without consulting Democrats in advance, signaling the GOP is planning to be aggressive in interviewing and, where necessary, deposing its subjects.

The subcommittee is set to have 21 members, with 12 already-appointed GOP members and nine Democrats, whom Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is expected to choose in the coming days.

Democrats, although they appear poised to participate in the subcommittee, voted unanimously against its creation.

Jeffries has ripped the panel as “insurrection protection,” while Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) has contended it would demonize law enforcement and also be used to “protect Donald Trump,” whose Mar-a-Lago residence was the target of an unprecedented FBI raid last year.

Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.

Source

Exclusive — Elise Stefanik Previews Weaponization Committee: ‘Deep State Needs to Be Rooted Out’ of Agencies

Exclusive — Elise Stefanik Previews Weaponization Committee: ‘Deep State Needs to Be Rooted Out’ of Agencies

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) expects the House’s newly created subcommittee examining the “weaponization” of the federal government to be “some of the most important work of the 118th Congress.”

Stefanik, who chairs the House Republican Conference, spoke to Breitbart News in an interview about what to anticipate from the panel after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) named her and 11 other Republicans as members of it this week.

“We’re coming off of two years of single-party Democrat rule, when there was virtually no oversight effectively of these agencies that have run afoul, and, in many cases, I believe, have committed illegal acts,” Stefanik said.

The subcommittee, led by Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), will have far-reaching authority to investigate the Justice Department, intelligence community organizations like the FBI and CIA, and private companies like Twitter.

Modeled after the famous 1975 Church Committee chaired by former Sen. Frank Church, the subcommittee is expected to have a massive budget — roughly the size of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) now-dissolved January 6 committee — to probe allegations of civil liberties violations within the agencies.

“Take the FBI and DOJ for starters,” Stefanik said. “There is a long, long list of abuses and illegal targeting, not just of high-profile Americans who happen to be conservatives or Republicans but everyday Americans, whether it’s the raid on Mar-a-Lago, whether it was the illegal spying on the Trump campaign in 2016, whether it was the tampering with the FISA documentation, or whether, most recently, it was the fact that one of Bob Mueller’s top FBI officials working on the special counsel was, at the time, he was the FBI, New York, head of counterintelligence, was just found guilty of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from Russia.”

The official, Charles McGonigal, a former special agent in charge at FBI Counterintelligence Division in Stefanik’s home state of New York, was recently indicted on charges of conspiring to violate and evade U.S. sanctions against Russia and money laundering.

McGonigal allegedly had a business relationship with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whose name made headlines during special counsel Mueller’s 2016 investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion because of Deripaska’s ties to Paul Manafort, a former Trump campaign manager.

“These agencies are ripe for transparency and ultimately reforms, and this select committee is going to be one of the many tools we have in the majority to get to the truth and make sure the American people know the truth,” Stefanik said.

While some of the subcommittee’s investigations will target agencies’ work that predates the Biden administration, Stefanik said the “deep state needs to be rooted out at the core of these agencies, and it’s culminating in the politicization and how the Biden White House has used these agencies as their political arm and a political weapon.”

The New York Republican said Republicans going to be “coming to the table with ideas” at a meeting Friday as the subcommittee begins its work, and as Republicans await the appointment of Democrat members, whom Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is expected to choose soon.

The subcommittee, which originally was set to have 13 members, is now expected to have 21 — 12 Republicans and nine Democrats — pending a resolution expanding the panel’s bench.

Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.

Source

Exclusive – Rep. Russell Fry Previews Oversight Committee’s Southern Border Hearing: Biden Is ‘a Day Late and a Border Wall Short’

Exclusive – Rep. Russell Fry Previews Oversight Committee’s Southern Border Hearing: Biden Is ‘a Day Late and a Border Wall Short’

Rep. Russell Fry (R-SC) previewed an upcoming House Oversight Committee hearing on the border crisis while appearing on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday over the weekend and blasted President Joe Biden as “a day late and a border wall short” on the heels of his first trip to the border two years into his presidency.

Fry is the only freshman congressmember to serve on both the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees and is one of just three members of Congress serving on both. The representative for South Carolina’s seventh district — who unseated former Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC), one of ten House Republicans to vote to impeach former President Donald Trump — emphasized the importance of oversight from all committees but noted that the Judiciary and Oversight committees would be key vehicles in bringing about accountability.

FLORENCE, SC - MARCH 12: House of Representatives candidate Russell Fry waves to a crowd during a rally with former U.S. President Donald Trump at the Florence Regional Airport on March 12, 2022 in Florence, South Carolina. The visit by Trump is his first rally in South Carolina since his election loss in 2020. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

Russell Fry waves to a crowd during a rally at the Florence Regional Airport on March 12, 2022, in Florence, South Carolina. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

“Look, every single committee is going to have oversight capabilities into this administration into what is going on, but these two, Oversight and Judiciary, are going to be kind of at the centerpiece of the oversight umbrella, if you will, of the new Republican majority,” Fry told Breitbart News Saturday host Matthew Boyle. “I mean, that is one of the tools of House Republicans in really exposing what is going on in the Biden administration, that they haven’t done oversight for two years. Nancy Pelosi didn’t do anything.”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks as she introduces President Joe Biden during the 2022 House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference March 11, 2022 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The upcoming Oversight hearing on the border will take place February 6, and as Fry pointed out, the committee will hear testimony from “officials at the border about how the Border Patrol agents are managing the crisis” in addition to “the impacts of the crisis on … their mission” of securing the border.

“To me, look, I mean, the president, it took two years to get down there,” said Fry. “You know, he went down to the border … during the slowest time of the year in January … President Biden’s been a day late and a border wall short. I mean, we really have to get a handle on that. You look at the policies of the Trump administration on illegal immigrant crossings on the border wall; these things work. These things unite the American people, really, on how to deal with this issue, but Democrats have turned a blind eye, so… uncovering what is going on down there is really important so that we know how to fix it because this administration hasn’t done that.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported more than 250,000 migrant encounters along the Southern border in December alone, setting a new record, as Breitbart News reported.

LISTEN: 

Boyle emphasized that “oversight is not just about ‘We’re going to go get these guys, and we’re going to go, you know, embarrass them and … drag them through the mud,’… it’s about highlighting these problems.”

“Again, highlighting the problems with the policies that we’re seeing at the border, digging into what went wrong at the beginning of the Biden administration, and then recommending solutions … that can then be implemented policy-wise,” Boyle added, emphasizing that Democrats and the mainstream media have claimed that Republicans are overstepping.

President Joe Biden walks along a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso Texas, January 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Fry concurred, noting, “The oversight capabilities of a Congress, any Congress, are really important to make sure that the administration, any administration, is doing their job and enforcing the laws and, and executing the laws that Congress passes … so this is, this is not new,” he said.

President Joe Biden walks with U.S. Border Patrol agents along a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso Texas, Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

President Joe Biden walks with U.S. Border Patrol agents along a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso Texas, Sunday, January 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

“And you know, it’s amazing to me, Democrats, how they flip the script because just a couple years ago they wanted to investigate everything, and it ultimately culminated in … a wrongful impeachment of a president without due process. … But now, it’s hands off, we can’t touch them,” Fry explained. “We can’t do anything … that would highlight the failures of this administration. But here’s the thing: I mean, they can continue to gaslight us with the national media, but the American people are smart, they know what’s going on. They see it, they feel it in their pocketbooks, so oversight is a really good way, like you said, to … bring light to issues that are happening in real time and provide solutions on how to deal with them.”

“So I think the border is chief among those, I mean, Republicans are committed in their commitment to America to secure that border, and part of that is going to be … a range of Oversight hearings that’s going to highlight the failures of this administration on dealing with the crisis at the border,” continued Fry. “Look, every single town in this country is seeing overdoses spike from fentanyl. I mean, we’re at an all-time high, you’re seeing border crossings at an all-time high, and people see it, they feel it in our communities, and it’s because of the failures of this administration to secure the border and enforce the laws. So oversight is going to provide not only a why, but a how to fix it.”

Boyle asked Fry if Americans can expect impeachments over the handling of the border crisis, including a potential impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, in addition to other actions to ensure accountability.

“Absolutely. For me, I think all options should be on the table as they should be for any Congress,” said the representative for South Carolina’s Seventh Congressional District. “But I also think in the same vein, having run against somebody who voted for [the] impeachment of a president … I think you’ve kind of lay your case out. I think you’ve got to develop testimony, real testimony in these hearings, to talk about the failures … and to expose them for what they are.”

Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.

Source

DOJ Shows Resistance to House Republicans’ Investigations; GOP Says Department Is ‘Scared’

The Department of Justice (DOJ) told the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee on Friday “it may not always be possible” to comply with the committee’s investigative requests.

“While we will work diligently to accommodate requests for public testimony, it may not always be possible to participate or to address all the topics the Committee wishes to raise,” Carlos Uriarte, the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legislative Affairs, wrote to committee chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in a letter obtained by Breitbart News.

Republicans’ requests “must be weighed against the Department’s interests in protecting the integrity of its work,” Uriarte noted.

The DOJ foreshadowing an inability to fully cooperate with the committee comes after Jordan contacted the department this past week, in his first communication since becoming committee chairman, to formally request documents, communication, and testimony from numerous DOJ officials.

Jordan’s requests pertained to the committee’s investigations into DOJ’s handling of certain parents attending school board meetings, its role in the southern border crisis, its raids on Mar-a-Lago and Project Veritas employees’ residences, its implementation of the FACE Act (the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act), its execution of January 6 investigations, and other concerns about “alleged politicization and bias.”

Flanked by House Republicans, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on November 17, 2022 in Washington, DC. House Republicans held a news conference to discuss "the Biden family's business dealings." (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Flanked by House Republicans, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on November 17, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The committee also now houses the newly created Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, a powerful panel with a high budget and broad purpose of investigating alleged civil liberties violations by government agencies, including the DOJ.

Jordan will chair the subcommittee, which was established via congressional resolution this month with no Democrat support. The Ohio Republican is expected to conduct some of his DOJ investigations through the subcommittee once Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) appoints members to it.

The resolution “authorized and directed” the subcommittee to investigate the executive branch’s investigations, “including ongoing criminal investigations.”

DOJ’s correspondence Friday, however, signals the two branches of government are heading for an impasse as the committee — and the new select subcommittee — seek to satisfy their oversight obligations.

“Longstanding Department policy prevents us from confirming or denying the existence of pending investigations in response to congressional requests or providing non-public information about our investigations,” Uriarte wrote.

The Judiciary Committee responded in a post on social media Friday asking, “Why’s DOJ scared to cooperate with our investigations?”

Jordan, who has served on the House Judiciary Committee since joining Congress 16 years ago, has made clear through his correspondence to DOJ that he will resort to issuing subpoenas if necessary to obtain the documents, communications, and testimony he has requested.

“Republicans aren’t worried about anything when it comes to DOJ’s letter,” a source close to the committee told Breitbart News, adding that “it won’t distract or obstruct anything in the slightest when it comes to their oversight of the department.”

Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.

Source

Cautiously Optimistic – The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government

Communication, discussion and step-by-step outlining is a very time-consuming enterprise.  If you are wondering about the light CTH posting recently, refer to the prior sentence.  I cannot say much; except to say no one is more cynical than I, and yet there is reason to be cautiously optimistic.

As previously noted, the 118th Congress is expected to authorize a “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.”   The subcommittee will fall 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 the House subcommittee.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and potential House subcommittee Chair Thomas Massie 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.   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 & 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.

Source

Jim Jordan Demands Big Tech Documents About Censorship

Incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent letters to big tech companies demanding documents relating to their censorship practices.

Jordan wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Alphabeth CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella:

Big Tech is out to get conservatives, and is increasingly willing to undermine First Amendment values by complying with the Biden Administration’s directives that suppress freedom of speech online. This approach undermines fundamental American principles and allows powerful government actors to silence political opponents and stifle opposing viewpoints. Publicly available information suggests that your companies’ treatment of certain speakers and content may stem from government directives or guidance designed to suppress dissenting views. Therefore, we write to request more information about the nature and extent of your companies’ collusion with the Biden Administration.

Big Tech’s role in shaping national and international public discourse today is well-known. In some cases, Big Tech’s “heavy-handed censorship” has been “use[d] to silence prominent voices” and to “stifle views that disagree with the prevailing progressive consensus.”

Because of Big Tech’s wide reach, it can serve as a powerful and effective partisan arm of the “woke speech police.” Although the full extent of Big Tech’s collusion with the Biden Administration is unknown, there are prominent examples and strong indications of Big Tech censorship following directives or pressure from executive branch entities. These examples raise serious concerns about how and why tech companies suppress, silence, or reduce the reach of certain political speech and speakers. The collusion of Big Tech and Big Government to advance censorship undeniably undermines liberty and jeopardizes our country’s First Amendment values and protections.

Confronting big tech was a core platform of House Republicans’ Commitment to America agenda, and Jordan, as the incoming chair of the Judiciary Committee, can subpoena big tech executives regarding their censorship practices.

Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.

Source

error

Please help truthPeep spread the word :)