CTH has never pretended or played the game of pretending, but several people have discussed the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing today on the Twitter censorship issue… and thus, some reminders and clarifications of inside DC politics are needed.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, hereafter called the House Oversight Committee or HOC, has a very specific function in DC circles that apparently too few understand.  Once again, let us be clear while trying to explain decades of false information founded upon arcane legislative outlooks.

This article is specific only to the House Oversight Committee.

Within Washington DC, the HOC has a very specific and unique function.  What Fox News is to corporate conservative punditry, so too is the HOC to the same DC system of pretending.  The House Oversight Committee is the “Chaff and Countermeasures” committee.  The HOC operates for both parties with the same mission.

The House Oversight Committee was/is created by the House legislative leadership to make money for the party in control of the Chair.  When the House Speaker is notified of a DC corruption issue, inside his/her office they will often be heard saying, “give it to oversight.”  The intent of that instruction is to give the issue to the HOC, so they can hold hearings, create soundbites and fundraise from the issue.

Making money for the party in control of the Chair is the primary function of the House Oversight Committee.  The HOC does not exist to create accountability or oversight; the HOC exists to exploit the issue for fundraising and satiate the base voters of the party in control of the Chair.  The HOC presents the illusion of accountability by constructing soundbites and member performances which are then broadcast on television for appearances to the voting audience.  It is essentially theater.

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Interesting background stuff.  The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government has scheduled their first committee hearing for Thursday, February 9th at noon [LINK].  There are no details on the agenda for the first meeting; however, there are indications of the seed and targeting process that is being used.

According to a press announcement today from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, who is also the Chairman of the select subcommittee, the larger Judiciary Committee is currently taking transcribed testimony from FBI whistleblowers about the political targeting within the Dept of Justice.

Against that backdrop, it is possible -perhaps likely- the agenda for the select subcommittee will be tailored as an outcome of those whistleblower depositions.  This would seem to make sense as the scope of the subcommittee needs to be narrowly tailored and focused on specific operations by government officials.  Using the whistleblower testimony to frame the investigation of the subcommittee makes sense, in that the testimony creates the basis for the investigation to follow.   First, here’s Jordan today:

The FBI whistleblower depositions will likely form the first material for the Select Subcommittee to discuss.   This structure provides a two-prong approach toward sunlight on the larger issues at stake.

The main House Judiciary Committee has constitutional oversight over the DOJ and by consequence the FBI.  The detailed discoveries are then passed down to the select subcommittee for further investigation.  Hopefully, everyone can see the benefit to that approach.  Judiciary holds bigger issues, then hands-off the smaller, perhaps deeper individual cases to the subcommittee for follow-up.

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As Mr. Carlson notes, everything about the Biden administration’s claims, reversals, contradictions and justifications surrounding the China spy balloon is ridiculous in the extreme.  All of it, just plain nuts.  WATCH:

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This is so stunningly incredulous, and transparently politically orchestrated, it’s laughable.

The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) defended the actions of the Biden administration last Saturday by saying three Chinese spy balloons had previously been deployed during the Trump administration.  However, President Trump and all national security heads including Mike Pompeo (CIA), Richard Grenell and John Ratcliffe (DNI) denied ever hearing about these balloons.

To reconcile the claim of historic Chinese spy balloon operations, against the denials and absence of briefings for the Trump IC officials, the current Intel Community (and Biden Administration) are now claiming they only discovered the prior balloon flights *AFTER* President Trump left office.

Oh, and due to national security issues, the IC cannot explain how they found out after the fact.

Yes Alice, that’s their story, and they’re sticking to it.

WASHINGTON DC – The Biden administration is willing to brief former Trump officials on newly discovered intelligence that China sent spy balloons into U.S. airspace during their time in charge.

The offer, described by senior Biden administration officials on Sunday night, comes as former President Donald Trump and senior members of his national security team say they were never briefed on such an incursion by a Beijing-sent aircraft.

“This information was discovered after the prior administration left. The intelligence community is prepared to offer key officials from the Trump administration briefings on [China’s] surveillance program,” one of the officials said. The official, along with several others, asked not to be named in order to discuss sensitive information.

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On the literal eve of a House vote to end the COVID emergency through legislation, the White House announced they would end the COVID-19 Emergency Declaration on May 11th. [pdf here]

The managers of Biden knew they would face a bipartisan vote to end the power of the dictatorial fiat known as the COVID emergency, so they quickly rushed to give Democrats in congress cover for voting against the legislative end.

In the end this is all a matter of pure politics and posturing for narrative control, because the Democrat controlled Senate is not going to take up the House bills.

WASHINGTON DC – […] The two bills – the Pandemic is Over Act and the Freedom for Health Care Workers Act – were planned by Republicans last week; and late Monday, the White House announced that it will terminate the national COVID emergency on May 11. The White House also announced its opposition to the two bills up for a vote today.

But Republicans pressed ahead anyway and easily passed both measures despite the GOP’s narrow majority in the House.

The Pandemic is Over Act, which would end the public health emergency, passed 220-210 in a vote that saw every Republican vote for it and every Democrat vote against it. But the Freedom for Health Care Workers Act, which would end the vaccination requirement for federal health care workers, passed 227-203 with help from seven Democrats.

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Twitter File release #15 is presented by Matt Taibbi and covers the vast Russian conspiracy as promoted by the media in 2018 and beyond. [SEE HERE]

As noted within the email discussion viewed by Taibbi, feeding the media narrative was a very specific group known as Hamilton 68, “headed by former FBI counterintelligence official (and current MSNBC contributor) Clint Watts, and funded by a neoliberal think tank, the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD).”

[Twitter File Release #15 HERE]

The entire assertion presented by Hamilton 68 and ASD was bogus, and Twitter executives knew it all along.  At first, Twitter tried to push back, telling the media there was no evidence to support the claims of the Hamilton 68 group.  However, the corporate media desperately wanted the Vast Russian Conspiracy to be true, so they disregarded the analysis done by the team at Twitter and kept pushing the lies.

As Taibbi notes, “The secret ingredient to Hamilton 68’s analytical method? A list: “Our analysis has linked 600 Twitter accounts to Russian influence activities online.” Eventually the people at Twitter figured out what methods Hamilton 68 was using and found the account list on their own.  However, there still was no reason to believe the accounts H68 identified were Russian.  In fact, almost all were just regular Americans who did not believe the Vast Russian Collusion Conspiracy.

“In layman’s terms, the Hamilton 68 barely had any Russians. In fact, apart from a few RT accounts, it’s mostly full of ordinary Americans, Canadians, and British,” Taibbi explains. “It was a scam. Instead of tracking how “Russia” influenced American attitudes, Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts, and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming,” Taibbi continued.

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The website Just Security, author former CIA operative Douglas Johnson, is very concerned about the House Subcommittee on Federal Government Weaponization. [SEE ARTICLE HERE} The concern is clouded under the auspices of fearing politicization by questioning the intelligence community about weaponized government.

The article is a mainstream bureaucratic outlook where the professional intelligence apparatus views themselves as beyond being accountable to the elected public officials, specifically the House members of the committee. The permanent unelected officials have a self-perception above the reach of the elected officials.

In essence, there is no public accountability model within their view of their operation. There can only be concealment, secret briefings, darkness and ‘trust us’ type reviews of their authorities. It’s quite a remarkable thing to read.

Just Security […] that’s oversight, a bipartisan endeavor conducted in the interest of all Americans, regardless of political affiliation. The oversight structure that came from the Church Committee investigations adopted legal and sensible rules of the road and protections for all stakeholders. Such supervision is conducted in controlled settings, shielded from public exposure, in a way that promotes candor and trust among both the auditors and the audited, facilitating transparency.

Note: How has that worked out for the American people?

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While Volodymyr Zelenskyy was on tour banging his tin cup for NATO donations, apparently his top government officials were skimming the books and building an extravagant life on the backs of the U.S. taxpayers.  Slava Ukraini!  However, on a brutally obvious note, I mean the wife of Zelenskyy went Christmas shopping in Paris and spent over €40,000 in a few hours on ritzy Avenue Montaigne.  Where did people think she got that money?

In an effort to stop the embarrassing revelations of internal corruption from weakening support for the inbound flows of cash from corrupt U.S. officials, the government of Zelenskyy has begun getting rid of the officials who were stealing the war money.

But hey, don’t worry, remember, President Zelenskyy decreed rules making it illegal for any political opposition to exist; so, there’s nothing to worry about – just a seating rotation of the same corrupt group.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Several senior Ukrainian officials, including five front-line governors, lost their jobs Tuesday in a corruption scandal plaguing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government as it grapples with the nearly 11-month-old Russian invasion.

Ukraine’s biggest government shake-up since the war began came as Poland formally requested permission from Germany to transfer a modest number of its Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine. Germany builds the high-tech armor, and Warsaw needs Berlin’s permission to send them to a non-NATO country.

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According to multiple media reports [See Here and See Here] Joe Biden’s attorneys coordinated a friendly FBI search of their client’s Delaware residence.  Lawyers for Biden were present and overseeing the FBI review of the home, when additional classified documents were discovered.

Interestingly, the Biden lawyers seemingly admit their client had been taking classified documents home for quite some time.  According to their statement (emphasis mine):

“DOJ took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President. DOJ also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years.”   (link)

That statement was written by Joe Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer.  That’s interesting on many levels, including the fact that Bob Bauer is married to Anita Dunn. Mrs. Anita Dunn is one of the original people who helped put Barack Obama in the White House; and Dunn worked with President Obama throughout his terms.  Additionally, Anita Dunn is on the short list to replace Biden’s outgoing Chief of Staff, Ron Klain.

Many people have wondered if Joe Biden was being set up for failure over this classified document scandal.  In my opinion, the entire operation is being managed – but not to remove Biden, simply to control him and ensure he doesn’t run again.

When it comes to the insurance of their ideological long-term goals, democrats play cutthroat politics much better than most imagine.  Ask Bernie Sanders what it’s like to be viewed as an impediment to the ideological quest, and what lengths his party will take to cut you down.

Now overlay Joe Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer.   Think about who exactly it was discovering these documents and why.  If Obama is the silent partner in the background of the Biden administration, then Dunn is the operational manager.  If Dunn is the operational manager, then her husband is very useful as the principle’s attorney.  From the big picture, it sure looks like Bauer is playing the role of Brutus.

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The U.S. Dept of Justice (DOJ) has sent a five-page letter to congress, copying Politico for the public distribution therein.  [SEE pdf HERE]

The snarky and passive aggressive Lawfare tone inside the letter is rather remarkable in its sanctimony and condescension.  Essentially, Main Justice is telling congressional oversight, specifically House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, not to expect any timely responses because there’s a lot going on.

Additionally, as the letter directly implies, Republican oversight is not in the favor of the current administration or DOJ and, well, in general terms, get over it – they aren’t complying.  However, feel free to initiate the formal negotiation process that will likely take several years.

From the letter to Jim Jordan, “Your January 17 requests—made now in your position as Chairman—initiate the constitutionally mandated accommodation process. Under this process, the Legislative and Executive Branches have a constitutional obligation to negotiate in good faith to meet the informational needs of Congress while protecting the institutional interests of the Executive Branch. We look forward to beginning this process in response to your January 17 letters.” (link)

(Via Politico) – […] The letter, addressed to Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), acknowledges the GOP’s multiple requests for information during the last Congress but doesn’t divulge any new information. Instead, Uriarte outlines how he hopes DOJ could have a “productive relationship” with Republicans in the new Congress, as Jordan had in previous letters accused the DOJ of “stonewalling” their requests, raised the possibility of a subpoena and said the committee could resort to “compulsory practices” to obtain the requested information and documents.

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