Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who briefly served under Donald Trump as his national security adviser and later endured years of unthinkable legal troubles for his support of the president, praised members of the Freedom Caucus for their tireless efforts to move new Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy to enact much-needed rules and investigations into federal agencies such as the FBI.
Writing in the Western Journal, Flynn gave credit to Congressional Republicans like Andy Biggs and Matt Gaetz for seeking concessions from McCarthy that would help “to establish a committee tasked with examining the alleged politicization of the Justice Department and FBI against Americans with certain political and cultural viewpoint,” as Conservative Brief stated.
Flynn noted in his column that investigations into the weaponization of federal agencies “could give us one more opportunity to restore much of our constitutional republic,” and also “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.”
The rule Flynn specifically highlighted was the creation of a new subcommittee, helmed by Jim Jordan (R-OH), that would establish “a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government as a select investigative subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary,” he wrote.
Flynn continued:
“For the past six months, the organization I have the privilege to head, America’s Future, has been conducting an examination of how two components of the federal government have been weaponized against the American people. The results have been published in a series of 18 reports called “Unequal Justice Under Law,” which have focused on the FBI and the DOJ.”
“Those reports provide important context as to exactly what needs to be exposed and reformed. In fact, the most recent of these reports, issued Jan. 6, 2023, called for the creation of a new ‘Church Committee,’ which is very much like what we hope the Weaponization Subcommittee will be. A review of history from nearly a half-century ago is instructive,” he added.
Conservative Brief described the original Church Committee’s work as resulting in the creation of FISA, a critical law that was supposed to reign in the power of the nation’s innumerable intelligence agencies from spying on American citizens.
The Church Committee’s findings led to the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, a law that has been amended a number of times since but which generally limits the country’s intelligence agencies ability to spy on American citizens. As former NSA analyst Edward Snowden revealed during Obama’s administration, however, the agencies continue to conduct mass surveillance on citizens, as Flynn noted.
Flynn said of the Church Committee’s original findings:
A massive public outcry resulted, in response to which the Senate created the Church Committee. The committee operated for 18 months, during which it “interviewed 800 witnesses and reviewed some 110,000 classified documents during 126 hearings.” One of its purposes was to propose legislation “to strengthen or clarify the national security, intelligence, or surveillance activities of the United States and to protect the rights of United States citizens with regard to those activities.”
Kevin McCarthy was opposed for 15 rounds of House Speaker voting, eventually winning over holdouts – or at least gaining a “present” vote from some hardliners – in exchange for certain concessions. So far, his word appears to be good.
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