The Oversight Committee is one of the most important committees of the US House of Representatives. The Republicans have now selected their new members for the body – and reached far to the right.
The US Republicans have filled the House Control Committee with some of their most extreme members. Of the 15 new party officials appointed to the powerful House Oversight Committee, 13 supported the lie of voter fraud, promoted conspiracy theories or had a history of inciting violence, US media reports.
New Republican committee members Lisa McClain, Lauren Boebert, Scott Perry, William Timmons, Tim Burchett, Gary Palmer, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar voted to challenge the results of the electoral vote count after the 2020 presidential election. They opined that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole victory from Donald Trump by cheating.
And the five newcomers to the House who were nominated by Republicans to the committee — Anna Paulina Luna, Russell Fry, Nick Langworthy, Chuck Edwards, and Eric Burlison — would have either flatly denied that Biden won the election, questioned his victory, or declined to comment on . Only MPs Kelly Armstrong and Mike Turner had nothing to do with lies and conspiracy theories in connection with the election.
Republicans rely on right-wing Trump fans
Greene and Gosar were banned from committee work by the democratically-controlled parliament in 2021 for advocating violence against their political enemies on social media and for disseminating racist or anti-Semitic language. Both have also performed with white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
Greene also questions the fair handling of the defendants in connection with the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. The 48-year-old recently said that if she had led the attack then, “we would have won” and the people would have been “armed”. Later, she claimed her remarks were merely sarcasm. And Gosar described members of the mob that stormed the Capitol as “peaceful patriots.”
However, Greene’s and Gosar’s committee colleagues have also made an unpleasant impression in the past:
- Lauren Boebert tweeted information about the whereabouts of then-Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi during the storming of the Capitol. The US government called the QAnon sympathizer “needle Nazis” because of her corona policy.
- Scott Perry was a key figure in Trump’s efforts to prevent the 2020 election results from being recognized. As part of the investigation, the Department of Justice had Perry’s cell phone confiscated by the FBI. According to the 60-year-old, he is not only known as a staunch Trump supporter, but also for spreading conspiracy tales about topics such as terrorism and the corona virus.
- Troy Nehls, a former police officer who served on the last Control Committee, was fired by Richmond, Texas police in 1998 for destroying evidence, according to the Huffington Post. After the 2020 presidential election, Nehls also voted in Congress to challenge the result.
- Lisa McClain claimed at a rally last year that Trump took down Osama bin Laden, when the al-Qaeda leader was killed in a 2011 raid ordered by President Barack Obama.
- William Timmons caused a stir with some particularly wild theses. In January 2021, he claimed wealthy people colluded with liberals and with state and federal judges to rig electoral laws in key states just before the 2020 election. Their goal was to make voting easier and to make it more difficult to contest the election results. “These efforts were numerous, purposeful, and flagrantly violated legal norms,” Timmons claimed at the time. To make matters worse, “big tech, the media and ‘election researchers’ banded together” to change the outcome of the election.
President Joe Biden and the Democrats face extremely turbulent times given the new composition of the control committee. The chairman of the panel, James Comer, has already made investigations into possible legal violations by Biden and his family a top priority. The names of the committee members are the latest evidence that the new Republican majority is being driven by a far-right faction aligned with Trump’s ideas about the appointments. This faction is notable for sharing Trump’s penchant for dealing with inflammatory language and misinformation, and is bent on using its newfound power to exact revenge on the Democrats and President Biden.
White House fears “flaky political stunts”
The White House reacted correspondingly harshly to the list of names: The Republicans handed over the power of control to the most extreme Trump supporters in the Republican faction, “who promote violent rhetoric and dangerous conspiracy theories,” said Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House attorney’s office , the US broadcaster CNN. “As these members join the Audit Committee, it appears that rather than engaging in bipartisan work on behalf of the American people, House Republicans may be setting the stage for esoteric political stunts.”
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The Anti-Defamation League, a New York-based non-governmental organization fighting anti-Semitism, racism, religious intolerance and hate crimes, particularly condemned the reinstatement of Greene and Gosar: “We are deeply disturbed by the decision to assign Green and Gosar to committees “The group tweeted. “Supporters of anti-democratic violent conspiracy theories have no place in leadership positions – let alone in bodies with appropriate jurisdiction.”
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