Last week’s battle in the House of Representatives resulted in the House Freedom Caucus, the more conservative arm of the GOP, receiving several concessions they view as meaningful. One of the concessions is a commitment to hold leaders of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) accountable for reported abuses of power.
An opinion piece in The Western Journal by Michael Flynn asserted the eleventh-hour concession “could lead to the exposure of the long train of abuses that have been visited on Americans by a politicized FBI, Justice Department and the larger security state.”
Recently installed Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) wasted no time moving forward top agenda items, including the announcement of the removal of Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar from the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees.
On Tuesday, McCarthy announced the adoption of a new “resolution establishing a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government as a select investigative subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary.”
According to the Western Journal, McCarthy explained that for the past six months, the group America’s Future has investigated how the FBI and DOJ “have been weaponized against the American people.”
Findings from the America’s Future study have been collated into 18 reports and published under the title “Unequal Justice Under Law.”
Reportedly, the findings present recommendations regarding what government agencies should be reformed — why and how.
One of the recommendations of the America’s Future group is to reactivate the “Church Committee,” a congressional committee named after Sen. Frank Church (R-ID). The committee was formed in the wake of Watergate and amid reports by professor Loch Johnson that “accused the CIA of massive spying and illegal intelligence operations directed against … American dissidents.”
The Church Committee revealed that the CIA’s Operation Shamrock and Operation MKUltra were multimillion dollar tax-funded programs that involved spying on Americans and conducting questionable “mind control” and drug experiments.
Though few reforms resulted, the original church committee recommended:
“Precautions must be taken not only to protect operations from exposure to enemy forces but also to conceal these activities from the American public in general. The knowledge that the Agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its mission.”
Sen. Church stated in 1975: “Hiding evil is the trademark of a totalitarian government. There is no more pernicious threat to a free society than a secret police which is operating beyond the law. … If these abuses had not been uncovered and had the agencies gone unchecked, we might well have seen a secret police develop in the United States. Once that begins, the Constitution itself is in very real danger.”
McCarthy argues that Church was right in 1975 and that his words hold true in 2023. Many argue that a federally-funded security state working in partnership with big tech puts in jeopardy Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.
History notes that shortly after the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, a female patriot named Elizabeth Powell asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
Franklin reportedly replied: ” A republic, if you can keep it.”
The Journal post concluded on an ominous note: “When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
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