Gabbard, GOP Senators to Appear in First Hearing on Weaponization of the Federal Government

Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) speaks at a campaign event in Lebanon, N.H., on Feb. 6, 2020. Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Tulsi Gabbard and two Republican senators will testify in the first hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

A source familiar with the proceedings told the Epoch Times that Gabbard, as well as Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) will appear in the committee’s first hearing. CNN first reported on the plan.

In November, Republicans unveiled a massive 1,050 page whistleblower report detailing “weaponization” of the federal government (pdf).

Now back in the majority, and with subpoena power under their control, Republicans are hoping to do more to address these allegations.

Gabbard, a former Democrat and representative from Hawaii, gained national notice during her 2020 presidential run. She marketed herself as a moderate, and spent much of her campaign energy on opposing the many foreign entanglements and wars the United States is involved with.

Since then, Gabbard has moved away from her party, officially leaving the Democratic Party in October 2022.

Afterwards, Gabbard announced she had signed on with Fox News as a contributor, making her debut in December 2022 with a surprise appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight.

During one appearance on the program, Gabbard denounced the FBI raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, which many Republicans point to as an instance of the “weaponization” of the federal government for partisan ends.

Whistleblower Report

In the whistleblower report, Republicans gave an indication of the matters they may investigate through the Weaponization Committee.

One of the most significant findings of the report showed that the FBI has been encouraging its agents to artificially inflate the number of domestic violent extremism (DVE) incidents.

Whistleblowers, Republicans said, “have described how FBI leadership is pressuring line agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism even if the matter does not meet the criteria.”

In at least one case of DVE, the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the FBI played a much more active role. Ahead of the 2020 election, a plot was uncovered to kidnap Whitmer, whose COVID policies sparked intense national debates before the election.

The accused would-be kidnappers were right-wing, and reports had suggested that the plot had developed organically.

But during the trial, it became obvious that this wasn’t the case: defense attorneys argued that their clients were pushed into crime by the FBI. According to defense attorneys during the trial, at least 12 FBI informants and agents were involved in the plot.

Suppressing Opposition Reports

Additionally, the report notes the FBI’s role in suppressing the since-authenticated story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, with Republicans saying that the president’s son has received “preferential treatment from federal law enforcement.”

The contents of the laptop included several photos of Hunter Biden in sexual situations, sometimes with people who appeared to be substantially younger than 18. Others showed the president’s son using drugs such as crack cocaine. Still, other sections of the laptop’s contents raised questions about the Bidens’ business dealings, with some emails and texts suggesting that Hunter Biden may have traded on his father’s prestige and influence for financial gain.

The story was broken by the New York Post, a conservative-leaning media outlet that was founded by Alexander Hamilton. After posting the laptop story to their Twitter page, the newpaper was suspended by the platform pending removal of the story. Similar suppression followed with other media outlets that reported on the contents of the laptop.

According to the report, some of that may not have been organic behavior by social media platforms.

The Judiciary Republicans noted that, during an August appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook had suppressed the story at the FBI’s urging.

At the same time, dozens of national security and federal law enforcement agents signed a letter claiming that the story was Russian disinformation—a claim that has since been shown to be patently untrue.

Around the same time, Republicans unveiled a report showing that the FBI had been aware of the allegations surrounding the younger Biden’s business dealings with Chinese and Ukrainian interests for years, but hadn’t taken action to look into the potential national security threat.

Republican efforts to get answers for this apparently significant oversight by the DOJ and FBI were met with silence. But GOP findings do provide some clues.

According to the report, a whistleblower allegation “suggests that FBI leadership in Washington may be the reason why the FBI seems to have provided Hunter Biden with special treatment.”

The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is scheduled to convene for the first time on Capitol Hill at noon on Feb. 9.

With a broad mandate that includes subpoena power and the authority to investigate ongoing criminal probes, the panel will look into any areas where the federal government may have abused its power and violated the rights of American citizens.

“We will follow the truth where it leads,” said Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), one of the members of the subcommittee, in a post on Twitter, while sharing the schedule for the panel’s first meeting, which will take place at the Rayburn House Office Building.

Republicans have compared the panel to the Church Committee, a respected Senate select committee that in the 1970s uncovered abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies.

“The American people deserve to have confidence in their government,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chair of the House Rules Committee, said on the House floor earlier in January. “They deserve to know that the broad powers granted to the federal government through the FBI, to the Department of Homeland Security, and to the intelligence agencies, are not being abused.”

Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.