Weaponization? Democrats gear up a response machine to GOP

As House Republicans gear up for two years of aggressive oversight of the Biden administration, Democrats have quickly stood up their own response machine, drawing resources from inside and outside Congress to push back.

Democrats have to contend with a suite of Republican probes designed to touch on nearly every major aspect of the Biden presidency, from the pandemic to the border to the Afghanistan withdrawal.  

There’s also a new House committee set up by the GOP to review the “weaponization” of the federal government, a panel that will investigate Republican claims that the FBI and Department of Justice have been politicized.

Those high-profile panels are now colliding with Democratic efforts emerging from the background.

The White House has established its own rapid response organization within its counsel’s office, cobbling together a team that has been rolling out memos ahead of hearings and pushing back on committee correspondence and even subpoenas minutes after they land. 

In Congress, top Democrats on panels with oversight authority say they plan to counter Republicans in real time during hearings. 

Outside groups have also geared up their own response efforts, mimicking campaign structures to undertake opposition research on Republicans and fire off fact checks and attacks. 

“It definitely has the ethos of a campaign. It definitely has the feel of a campaign. And that’s what we’re doing,” said Brad Woodhouse, a former spokesman for the Democratic National Committee who is now a board member of the Congressional Integrity Project. He said the group began “relaunching” in preparation for a GOP House majority. 

“Since they’ve admitted these investigations are purely about politics, we are mounting a campaign to make them pay a political price for that,” said Woodhouse.  

The White House began expanding its oversight response team over the summer, but it’s been further bolstered since the election, with Russell Anello, the former staff director for Democrats on the House Oversight panel, brought in to help the team. 

It’s a strategy the White House believes will let the broader staff stay focused on Biden’s agenda while the response outlet goes in deep to battle investigations the Biden administration sees as being driven by the MAGA wing of the GOP. 

Much of the response coordination has been under the radar. White House counsel oversight staff have met with various agencies to prep for probes, including helping Cabinet officials who could face impeachment. Republicans have threatened to impeach multiple officials, though so far an impeachment resolution has been introduced only for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Over the summer the team also reviewed numerous letters sent by Republicans demanding various documents and communications. They’ve also studied up on interviews given by the two men leading the bulk of the House GOP investigations: House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-Ky.). 

Now, however, their work is becoming more public.

Ahead of a House Oversight hearing on the border this week, the White House team put out a memo attacking Republicans on the topic, arguing the GOP agenda would worsen conditions by halting Biden reforms they say limit irregular migration. 

Hours before the first meeting of the weaponization subcommittee, the team sent out links to a suite of publications that have fact checked various GOP claims relating to the Justice Department and FBI. 

Comer brushed off the memo at the outset of his hearing this week on the border. 

“The White House’s oversight spokesman just released a memo criticizing Republicans for having the nerve to have this hearing. He says why do House Republicans want to make things worse at the border?” he said.  

“I don’t understand how two front-line border patrol agents coming before this committee would make things worse. That’s what the oversight committee is about.” 

House Democrats are working on fine-tuning their own messaging and strategies.  

Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said he’s advised other members to take notes while the fast-talking Jordan speaks so they can go back and address each point. 

But he admitted that practice can also bog Democrats down. 

“That’s a problem with political discourse today. You know, one side mixes fact and fiction freely, and the other side tries to clean it up. But it’s very hard to get your message out if you’re just cleaning up falsehoods from the other side,” Raskin told The Hill. 

Raskin said the committee should be focused on whether federal programs are “actually translating into concrete benefits” for taxpayers. 

“And that has a nonpartisan meaning to it. To the extent that they turn the whole thing into a partisan witch hunt, we will act as a truth squad to expose falsehoods and disinformation,” he said. 

Some outside groups have launched with the hopes of playing a similar role. 

Woodhouse said the Congressional Integrity Project now has a “war room” staffed with about 15 people, a group that includes Hannah Muldavin, who previously worked as deputy communications director for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. 

They point to comments from Jordan that he would use his investigative platforms to “help frame up the 2024 race, when I hope and I think President Trump is going to run again. And we need to make sure that he wins.” 

The comment has become the basis for many of the groups who see GOP oversight as largely illegitimate. 

“The outcome of this election was a massive disappointment for Republicans. Yes, they — by the skin of their chinny-chin-chin and by a dint of history — took the House. But look at what it’s cost them: 15 rounds of voting for McCarthy to become Speaker and in the end the deals he cut to become Speaker all revolved around investigations,” said Woodhouse.  

“We think these are entirely driven by MAGA politics, by Trump revenge. They are Trump-style political stunts. He used to refer to legitimate investigations as witch hunts. These actually are political witch hunts.” 

Other groups have also launched to counter GOP narratives, including Facts First USA, which when created last October pledged to be a “SWAT team to counter Republican congressional investigations.” 

David Brock, a Democratic strategist and the group’s founder, said he’s drawing from prior experience running Correct the Record, which was active during Hilary Clinton’s campaign in responding to accusations surrounding Benghazi and her email server. 

He stressed his organization won’t just be devoted to fact checking. 

“You have to be able to fight the Republicans on the level of narrative and storytelling. You can’t just win based on having all the facts on your side,” Brock said. 

The group has been organizing calls with Democratic surrogates, sharing its research and messaging strategies. 

“We want to stay, in this organization, in an offensive posture as possible. It’s obviously necessary to play some defense, but to the extent we can anticipate what the Republicans are going to do and get ahead of that we want to try to do that,” he said. 

But the group also raised eyebrows with a recent Twitter thread posted in response to a House Oversight hearing about Hunter Biden, posting pictures of men named Dick or Richard to mock Republicans for being concerned about the “content” on his laptop. 

Some Democrats said privately they found the response baffling and juvenile.  

Brock said the organization is still fine-tuning its pushback strategy. 

“It’s a balancing act between when you’re doing something where you’re responding to things that are very salacious and crazy where you go with it. Do you stay on the more serious side, or do you stay on the more, you know, kind of poking fun at what they’re doing? And so I think you probably need a mix of both. And we’re very early on in the process, and we’re still sort of experimenting with what will work and what won’t work,” he said. 

Republicans have largely been shrugging off the Democratic response. 

“If they want to defend the indefensible, then more power to them,” Comer said. 

But one source familiar with Democrats’ efforts said they represent a shift in how the party has traditionally responded, stressing that there were lessons to be learned from less robust coordination in the Obama era.  

“When Obama was in and the House switched to Republican control there was no outside help there,” they said. 

“Now Democrats are being what people don’t think of Democrats as being, which is aggressive.”