Enjoyed the Benghazi hearings? You're gonna love the GOP era of 'angertainment'
If the recent past is prologue, however, most of what House Republicans have in store will be bad-faith efforts to score political points.
On Nov. 2, Jordan, the presumed incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland alerting him to several potential topics of interest. The tone was accusatory.
Jordan wrote that in his hands, Judiciary would be looking into the department’s “targeting of journalists with Project Veritas,” its “one-sided enforcement of the FACE Act” and the FBI’s “unprecedented raid on President Trump’s residence.”
Project Veritas is a right-wing attack group that uses a variety of deceptions, including fake identities and secret recordings, to “investigate” alleged wrongdoing by Democrats and the usual list of Republican cultural targets: teachers, doctors who work with trans kids, etc.
Jordan is interested in what happened when Project Veritas became entangled in a federal investigation after purchasing first daughter Ashley Biden’s stolen diary for $40,000. The ACLU, while deploring Project Veritas’ “deceptions,” said it was troubled by the way the feds carried out the investigation. That could be fair game for a hearing.
On the other hand, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or the FACE Act, should be left alone. It was signed into law during the Clinton administration to protect those receiving reproductive healthcare at heavily picketed locations such as Planned Parenthood clinics. As a sop to religious conservatives, houses of worship were included in the list of facilities protected by the law. MAGA Republicans now allege the law is being used to harass antiabortion demonstrators and is not enforced in cases of religious services being disrupted, though I could find no evidence of that.
Jordan et al. are also trying to make a political martyr of Mark Houck, an antiabortion activist who was arrested by the FBI after shoving a 72-year-old clinic escort at a Philadelphia Planned Parenthood in October 2021. Houck has pleaded not guilty to two counts of violating the FACE Act.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-11-30/republican-angertainment-judiciary-committee-hunter-biden-jim-jordan
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