Plan to investigate FBI and Homeland Security won Bishop’s support for McCarthy
Rep. Dan Bishop told reporters last week he never thought he would feel the way he does about federal law enforcement and the security state but now believes they represent a danger to Americans.
On Tuesday afternoon, Bishop, a Republican from Charlotte, voted to create a subcommittee that would investigate the work of the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies.
The House voted 221 to 211, split along party lines, to pass a resolution in support of creating the subcommittee.
Two representatives did not vote on the resolution Tuesday including Rep. Valerie Foushee, a Democrat from Orange County. North Carolina’s House members are now evenly split 7-7 between the two parties.
Bishop said he negotiated its creation in exchange for his and several other lawmakers’ votes to support Rep. Kevin McCarthy for House speaker. Bishop opposed McCarthy last week until the 11th vote on Friday.
Hours later, around midnight, and after 15 votes, McCarthy would secure enough support to be named House speaker.
Bishop tweeted following his endorsement: “With the rules agreement we negotiated we will have a powerful Church-style committee to go after the weaponization of the federal government — the FBI, the DOJ, DHS, and all the rest. This is a victory for the Constitutional rights of all Americans. I’m ready to get to work.”
Investigating investigators
In 1975, former Sen. Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho, led a committee to investigate the CIA, FBI, IRS and National Security Agency and found those organizations had participated in assassination attempts on foreign leaders, created watch lists of thousands of U.S. citizens and collected customer information from telephone companies.
Bishop invoked revelations of the FBI spying on:
- Frank Sinatra.
- John Lennon.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Muhammad Ali.
“We entrust our Department of Justice, FBI and intelligence community with great power to keep us safe, and yet, as long as these agencies have existed, they violated Americans’ civil rights — everyday Americans,” Bishop said Tuesday on the House floor. “The security state believes itself to be above the Constitution.”
He accused the executive branch of getting Twitter and Facebook content censored, covering up potential investigations involving President Joe Biden’s family and silencing critics of COVID-19 and vaccine mandates.
“The intelligence community abused its power to spy on presidential candidates — a sitting president — and members of Congress and their staffs,” Bishop said.
PolitiFact, looking into previous Republican claims of spying, reported that data collected about the 2016 Trump campaign was shared with the CIA. PolitiFact found no evidence that the research continued after Donald Trump became president.
Opponents of the bill said it’s meant to frustrate ongoing investigations against Trump and House members.
Rep. Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said six members of the House requested presidential pardons from Trump because of their involvement in voter fraud conspiracy theories and the events that led to Jan. 6, 2021, when a crowd of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop Biden’s election certification.
McGovern said that the first mention of this new subcommittee came before the House last week, on Jan. 2, but as McCarthy failed to secure enough votes to become House speaker, edits were made on Friday to the resolution that would form the subcommittee.
“We didn’t get that until 10 p.m. on Jan. 6, after 13 speaker votes, and what changed in this legislation, and this is really curious, is they expanded the select committee’s authority to investigate ongoing criminal investigations,” McGovern said, adding that oversight of the CIA and IRS were also added after 10 p.m. Friday.
Around that same time Friday, McCarthy walked back to the House floor believing he had enough votes to secure him in the top leadership position of the House and make him third in line to the presidency.
“The people who are asking for these changes are the same people who want to investigate the people who are investigating them,” McGovern said. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but this isn’t right. This isn’t openness, this isn’t transparency. This is corruption. This is unacceptable.”
Bishop’s name has not been mentioned in the Jan. 6 committee hearings, including in references to presidential pardons. There are no known investigations involving Bishop. His staff did not respond to a message asking for confirmation.
Bishop is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, an ultraconservative group of lawmakers that includes the six who requested pardons.
Subcommittee’s investigations
A six-page resolution outlines the role of the subcommittee, known as the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which would be made up of a chair, a ranking member and no more than 11 others.
Its tasks include looking into the executive branch’s authority to collect information and investigate U.S. citizens, including ongoing criminal investigations. It will look at how the executive branch gathers and shares information with the private sector, nonprofits and other government agencies. It will also examine whether there are legal or civil liberty violations.
A final report is due Jan. 2, 2025.
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