Weaponization of whistleblowers — buckle up for the mother of all show trials

Conservative Republicans have been megaphoning to the world that they and the American people are the victims of a conspiracy by evil doers — Democrats, leftist media, Big Tech, social media and the federal “Deep State,” like DOJ and the FBI — all wanting to snuff them and their free speech out of power. In the mid-term elections in November, a skeptical public threw Republicans a life-vest and allowed them a bare majority in the lower body of Congress, as if to say, “Here’s a life-line. You’ve got two years. Now, put up or shut up.”

With that, the stage is set for Republicans to strut their stuff.

Their crucible will largely be a new subcommittee of the House born of that prolonged and zany mating dance between Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the MAGA extremists in advance of his election as Speaker. That panel, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), could be the Republicans’ last hope for remaining relevant and clinging to power on the big stage.

The subcommittee has wide powers and jurisdiction. The Republicans vainly hope it will be the second coming of the Church Committee of the 1970s. With that much on the line, the Republicans need not only to “put up” for the public and their own credibility, but they also desperately need to avoid major embarrassments — which they are uniquely qualified to cause.

How major? Suppose the FBI descended upon Mar-a-Lago, search warrants in hand, for stolen classified documents, and they discovered there were no such documents, thus having egg all over their faces. Major like that. Or say an 80-year-old president of the opposing party trapped their entire party into standing up on the House floor in full support of his proposal to take Social Security and Medicare off the pruning table. That’s major. Or, let’s say they would continually call hearings promising to expose corruption and crimes against the evil doers, yet fail to provide compelling evidence. That once was called “crying wolf,” and Republicans should attend to Aesop’s moral lest voters stop listening.

This latter hypothetical might already have begun. Jordan’s committee failed on Thursday to offer much — if any — new evidence about how conservatives have been assaulted by conspiring forces, despite the build-up of expectations as justification for establishing the panel. He now promises that will come later.

And the day before, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, including Jordan committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), failed to prove their main point: that the FBI attempted to coerce Twitter into taking down a damaging story about Hunter Biden in the New York Post just before the 2020 elections.

They failed to make the point even with their own witnesses, who contradicted them. The hearing backfired badly.

While Jordan and his allies failed to gain traction on the credibility front, some tea leaves emerged, hinting at what to expect from the subcommittee going forward. Republicans served notice that this will be a full two-year effort. A veteran observer might conclude, therefore, that this means a two-year “Benghazi 2.0” operation and that he should mark his calendar with President Biden’s monthly approval ratings to track if these hearings impact Biden as negatively as they did Hillary Clinton’s going into 2016.

Also worthy of note was Democratic freshman Rep. Daniel Goldman (N.Y.), former prosecutor and lead staff counsel on the first Trump impeachment team, who displayed a prosecutor’s deft skill of cross-examining Republican witnesses and diminishing the value of their testimony. He promises to keep the majority on their toes.

Prediction: McCarthy, at a minimum, will be tempted at some point to remove Goldman from the subcommittee out of sheer frustration at his effectiveness. This panel likely will not be able to handle Goldman’s courtroom skills. If their dream is to Benghazi Joe Biden, Goldman will be their nightmare.  

Finally, but most importantly, it is clear that Jordan’s weapon of choice against the FBI will be the weaponization of allegedly “dozens” of FBI “whistleblowers.”

The irony of a panel targeting the weaponization of government by itself weaponizing anonymous, unvetted federal agents — about whom we know only what Jordan has told us — promises to be a tinderbox.

It is unknown the extent to which these are legitimate, credible whistleblowers — or if they simply felt under-valued, lacking in good leadership. Typically, legitimate whistleblowers would have provided written complaints about, say, an FBI cover-up of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Inspectors General, Congress and the public need to see these disclosures before credibility can be established.

Jordan, who led the charge during the first Trump impeachment to identify and smear the whistleblower on the Trump/Ukraine call, now emits the odor of an opportunist as a whistleblower champion. We’ll see.

Only two of the “whistleblowers” have come forward publicly so far, and there are already questions surrounding them. The rest are anonymous, perhaps even to their own agency, or even to the federal system designed to protect them and vet them for credibility. The whistleblower of the Ukraine call went through that process and emerged with great credibility.

One of the two known FBI whistleblowers testified at Jordan’s hearing Thursday — former agent Nicole Parker. She lamented the Bureau’s recent politicization. Yet in a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity on Jan. 13, she implied that most field agents like her were too busy working cases to get exposed to political issues.

Likewise, Special Agent Steve Friend, whose whistleblower disclosure complaint was thrown out by the Office of Special Counsel, is still awaiting a response from the DOJ inspector general on his retaliation complaint. In addition, Friend has been called out by press reports on questions surrounding his known public disclosures.

A tinderbox indeed.

A gratuitous tip from a veteran observer of congressional oversight: buckle-up!

Kris Kolesnik is a 34-year veteran of federal government oversight. He spent 19 years as senior counselor and director of investigations for Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Kolesnik then became executive director of the National Whistleblower Center. Finally, he spent 10 years working with the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General as the associate inspector general for external affairs.