White House blasts appointing ‘extreme MAGA members’ to Oversight Committee
Ryan King
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The White House criticized the appointment of so-called extreme MAGA members to the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday as it braces for scrutiny over the recent document scandal.
Adding “extreme MAGA members” such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Scott Perry (R-PA), and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) to the powerful investigatory committee would lay the groundwork for “political stunts” and hinder bipartisan work, the White House said.
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“As we have said before, the Biden administration stands ready to work in good faith to accommodate Congress’s legitimate oversight needs,” White House spokesman Ian Sams said. “Chairman [James] Comer once said his goal was to ensure the committee’s work is ‘credible,’ yet Republicans are handing the keys of oversight to the most extreme MAGA members of the Republican caucus who promote violent rhetoric and dangerous conspiracy theories.”
“It appears that House Republicans may be setting the stage for divorced-from-reality political stunts instead of engaging in bipartisan work on behalf of the American people,” he added.
Some of those “extreme MAGA members” were stripped of committee assignments during the prior Congress. Sams also alluded to past controversies such as when Gosar shared a disparaging video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) depicting anime-style violence against her.
Comer recently opened an investigation into President Joe Biden’s classified document scandal in which roughly two dozen files with classified markings were recovered at Biden’s Wilmington residence and a think tank since last November. Comer’s counterpart House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has also opened a similar inquiry into the document controversy.
At least one of the new members of the Oversight Committee, Greene, has called for the impeachment of Biden. Sams also iterated his call for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to release specifics of the deals he cut with the roughly 20 Republican holdouts in order to lock down the speaker’s gavel earlier this year.
“House Republican leaders should explain why they are allowing these individuals to serve on this committee and reveal transparently once and for all what secret deals they made to the extreme MAGA members in order to elect a speaker,” Sams added.
Democrats in the House have similarly bristled at the prospect of the four firebrand representatives being added to the committee.
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“I’m HORRIFIED that it was just announced that Marjorie Taylor Greene will serve on the committee. A QAnon conspiracy theorist + Jan 6 insurrectionist doesn’t belong on a committee that exists to fight extremism,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) tweeted.
https://twitter.com/RitchieTorres/status/1615444937020956688
Some Democrats such as Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) have expressed their desire to find “answers” to Biden’s document controversy. U.S. Attorney Robert Hur was appointed last week to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation of the matter.