When you can’t govern, when every policy you advocate for is a disaster, and when the American people have grown weary of your march to an economic gulag, you must deflect their attention.
The Democrats in Congress, with a few accomplices from the Republican Party, continue to dredge up the January 6th incident hoping that you will not feel the discomfort of their dystopian policies.
Recently, the illegitimate January 6 Committee decided to hold Steve Bannon, a onetime Trump campaign leader and a short-lived employee of the President, in contempt for his failure to comply with the unlawful subpoena issued by that bogus group of Pelosi witch-hunting surrogates.
The Constitution allows Congress to oversee the workings of government. The committee system in Congress provides for hearings to consider factors related to legislation, take reports from government agencies, and receive information necessary to craft laws within constitutional constraints.
Oddly, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) decided to take away the normal prerogative of the leader of the minority party to appoint its chosen members to a committee when she organized the sham January 6 Committee.
The purpose of the Committee is illegitimate in that both the Chairman (Bennie Thompson, D-MS) and Vice-Chair (Liz Cheney, R-WY) have indicated that they want to get to the bottom of what happened on January 6, 2021.
The Constitution bars investigations that have little or no real purpose other than simply to find out “what happened.” Even if the event is dramatic and high profile, an investigative committee must have a legitimate legislative purpose other than “getting to the bottom” of things.
Oversight of the executive branch is permissible, but the January 6 events do not fall into that category because the subject of the inquiry involves private citizens. The U.S. Supreme Court has noted that “…Congress [is not] a law enforcement or trial agency. These are functions of the executive and judicial departments of government. No inquiry is an end in itself; it must be related to, and in furtherance of, a legitimate task of the Congress. Investigations conducted solely for the personal aggrandizement of the investigators or to ‘punish’ those investigated are indefensible.”
In reality, the unstated purpose of the sham Pelosi gang is to criminally investigate anyone in the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Liz Cheney attempted to defend the use of subpoenas by the committee arguing that they had legitimate congressional purposes. Her first rationale was that they, the gang of nine, needed to investigate a “plot.” A plot implies organization in a criminal activity. Organization suggests a “conspiracy.” A conspiracy is a criminal organization. Thus, the witch-hunt that Cheney attempts to defend is outside the constitutional scope of a legitimate congressional committee.
Cheney then presents three visceral arguments about being scared, about President Trump watching what was happening on TV but not acting in the way Cheney would have liked, and other meanderings about how the citadel of democracy was assaulted. All of the other Democrats who spoke up to defend subpoenas did the same, some with more hyperbolic flourishes comparing the four-hour incident to the British Invasion of the nation in 1812, the attack on the U.S. homeland by Al Qaeda terrorists on September 11, and Pearl Harbor.
But, Cheney was the only one trying to fit her square peg into the round hole of the Constitution. She argued that they needed to subpoena private citizens, particularly Steve Bannon, to see if they should strengthen criminal laws or increase mandatory sentencing.
Of course, that is utterly ridiculous because Cheney and her accomplices can recommend new criminal laws and new sentencing guidelines without hauling private citizens before them. What? Only if you hear from Steve Bannon can you do your legislative work?
The comments of this gang of rogues on the House Floor advocating to hold Bannon in contempt showed clearly that they have already made up their minds as to what they want, which is to conduct a criminal investigation. They were so emotionally invested that I expected Rep. Kinzinger to begin weeping during his statement.
You can’t simply try to fake that you are trying to perform legitimate congressional duties. Rascally Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has said, “You know it’s an overwhelming task because we’re talking about one of the largest crimes in American history, involving thousands of people and thousands of potential offenses.”
Well, Mr. Raskin, the line of U.S. Supreme Court cases from Kilbourn v. Thompson (1880), through Quinn v. U.S. (1955), Hutchinson v. U.S. (1962), Eastland v. Unites States Servicemen’s Fund (1975) and the recent Trump v. Mazars, LLP (2019), all tell us that if you think it is the biggest crime in American history, the proper venue for investigation, including subpoenas and hearings, is not Congress. It is the executive and judiciary.
Why is that so? Because Congress doesn’t have plenary police powers.
Bennie Thompson, Liz Cheney, and the gang-of-nine argue that they want to “..tell the American people the story of what happened,” or that “We have to see from the standpoint of who helps finance what went on. We have to see what individuals had something to do with getting people here.” They are acting without constitutional authority because they don’t have a real legislative purpose. They are just a bunch of nosy neighbors seeking to abuse their power.
And when Raskin and his cohort of conspirators want to investigate “one of the largest crimes in American history,” they haven’t constitutional authority because criminal investigations belong with the Executive and Judicial branches.
The Court has held that Congress has no “general power to inquire into private affairs and compel disclosures.” (Quinn) Further, a congressional subpoena is only valid if it is “related to, and in furtherance of, a legitimate task of the Congress.”
I suspect that an objective court will someday in the not-so-distant future remind this illegitimate committee that it is attempting to wield power against private citizens that it simply does not have.