House GOP’s Priorities Should be Biden Family, Weaponization of Government, Border Crisis: Heritage Oversight Project Head

An American flag flies at half-staff at the U.S. Capitol, Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

For the first time in four years, the Republican Party holds control of the House of Representatives, and with it, the crucial ability to conduct oversight of other branches of the federal government.

But while Republicans undoubtedly have a laundry list of topics they would like to delve into, Mike Howell, director of the Oversight Project at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has highlighted what he considers are three oversight and accountability priorities for the chamber going forward.

“So, the Biden family’s corruption is huge,” Howell noted in a Jan. 9 interview with The Epoch Times.

“[Republicans have] already indicated that to be their priority, and it is a completely legitimate role for Congress to engage in this,” he added.

In November, House Republicans announced plans to investigate the president for his potential connections to his family members’ foreign business dealings.

The Bidens’ alleged corruption, Howell stressed, creates not only ethics and transparency concerns but also raises the question of “whether we had a free and fair election or if the FBI, DOJ, and others in Big Tech meddled in it.”

Noting that he believes such meddling did occur, he added, “That absolutely needs to be a priority because we’re coming up on another presidential election in two years, and we cannot have meddling in it again.”

On Wednesday, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) announced new actions in the committee’s inquiry into the Biden family’s business dealings, including requesting so-called suspicious activity reports and other financial records linked to the family from the Treasury Department.

Additionally, Comer called on three former Twitter executives—former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, former Deputy General Counsel James Baker, and former Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth—to appear at a public hearing the week of Feb. 6.

“For the past two years, the Biden administration and Big Tech worked overtime to hide information about the Biden family’s suspicious business schemes and Joe Biden’s involvement,” Comer said in a statement. “Now that Democrats no longer have one-party rule in Washington, oversight and accountability are coming.”

Law Enforcement

In recent months, the release of internal documents and communications between Twitter employees and government officials at the FBI have raised alarm, given that many of those communications surrounded the suppression of election-related speech and information.

For instance, it is now known that when the New York Post released its bombshell report about Hunter Biden’s business dealings just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, FBI employees used their influence to discredit the information and limit its spread across social media.

According to Howell, such overreach on the part of law enforcement should also be a top investigative priority for the House, and with the House Judiciary Committee’s newly created select subcommittee to investigate the “weaponization of the federal government,” House leadership would appear to agree.

The 1975 Senate Church Committee that investigated abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies has been cited as a model for the new subcommittee, which would have the authority to review ongoing criminal investigations and the ways in which executive branch agencies collect and use information about American citizens and the entities they work with in the process.

“Biden’s shown that he will literally use the federal government and intelligence powers to go after conservatives,” Howell asserted. “He will weaponize the Department of Justice to do things that go after parents while Supreme Court justices’ homes are terrorized and pregnancy crisis centers are firebombed. So, this Church Committee needs to make sure that’s not happening moving forward.”

Border Crisis

The third crucial oversight matter Howell identified was the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border—a situation he holds to be the result of deliberate malfeasance on the part of President Joe Biden.

“Biden purposely opened the border,” he contended. “He did this full well knowing what would happen if you were to do that. … It was all done to create a crisis to hold hostage for an amnesty trade, and we cannot have our national security working against the American people in such a way.”

While illegal immigration is an issue that has plagued the nation for decades, the Biden administration’s handling of the issue has thus far been characterized by record-breaking encounters and arrests at the southern border and legal skirmishes over whether to terminate the Trump-era Title 42 policy that facilitated the rapid deportation of migrants traveling from countries with high infection rates of COVID-19.

Last week, the president announced new steps his administration will be taking to secure the border, including the expansion of a parole program that was previously restricted to Venezuelans to include noncitizens from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua. Under the program, eligible applicants can seek legal status for two years if they enter the country legally, find a sponsor, and pass a background check.

Another measure the administration announced is the new ability of those intending to apply for asylum to schedule an appointment at a port of entry to start their claim. While the majority of such claims are ultimately rejected, the lengthy legal process often takes years for claims to be adjudicated, and those rejected are not always deported.

On Sunday, Biden took his first tour of the border since becoming president, spending several hours in El Paso, Texas, to assess the situation and resources needed.

According to Howell, however, the visit was merely a “photo op” designed to help Biden portray himself as a moderate heading into the upcoming presidential election.

“What he’s doing now is he’s going down to the border, he announced his new plans, which are just the industrial scale importation of illegal aliens into the U.S., and then he’s going to say, ‘I can’t do anything to solve this crisis unless the Republicans give me amnesty.”

As for how the House should address the matter, Howell said Republicans’ first move should be to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom Republicans have accused of breaking immigration law.

On Jan. 9, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) introduced articles of impeachment against Mayorkas in the House, holding that Mayorkas failed to execute the Secure Fence Act of 2006 by not maintaining “operational control” of the southern border, and that he “willfully provided perjurious, false, and misleading testimony to Congress” while testifying before Congress on Nov. 15 and April 26 of last year.

In a statement provided to ABC News, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Marsha Espinosa pushed back against those claims.

“Secretary Mayorkas is proud to advance the noble mission of this Department, support its extraordinary workforce, and serve the American people,” Espinosa said. “The Department will continue our work to enforce our laws and secure our border, while building a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system. Members of Congress can do better than point the finger at someone else; they should come to the table and work on solutions for our broken system and outdated laws, which they have not updated in over 40 years.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House and Department of Justice for comment.