Trump Ally Is About to Become One of Congress' Most Powerful People

One of President Joe Biden's fiercest critics will soon be leading the committee most likely to investigate him and his administration.

On Monday, House Republicans announced that Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan—who has repeatedly accused the FBI of interfering with U.S. elections—would be their pick to lead the House Judiciary Committee, an immensely powerful oversight committee with the power to investigate law enforcement and, if called for, to bring impeachment proceedings against a U.S. president and members of their cabinet.

Jordan and incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have already indicated they are willing to do so, pledging months before the new Congress to launch numerous investigations into the Biden administration and the agencies the president oversees using the fullest extent of their subpoena power.

Jordan himself has threatened to subpoena former FBI officials for refusing to testify while his party was in the minority, while the new chairman is expected to lead a new committee dedicated to probing the "weaponization" of the federal government under Biden's leadership.

"Our system is built on checks and balances," McCarthy said in his acceptance speech for the speakership several days ago. "It's time for us to be the check and provide some balance to the president's policies."

Recent changes to the House rules brokered under McCarthy's arduous pathway to the speakership could give the House Judiciary Committee—as well as the powerful House Oversight Committee—significant agency to do so, even operating under a Democratically-controlled White House and Senate.

Jordan's committee would have the newly vested ability to probe "the expansive role of Article II authority vested in the Executive Branch to collect information on or otherwise investigate citizens of the United States, including ongoing criminal investigations," according to a yet-to-pass resolution creating the committee.

This would give members of Congress unprecedented insight into the details of ongoing criminal investigations into figures like former President Donald Trump, a level of access not seen since 1975's infamous Church Committee hearings into numerous abuses of power committed by agencies like the National Security Administration, the IRS, the FBI and the CIA.

And Jordan plans to use it: In addition to ongoing antitrust concerns around Big Tech discussed under Democratic control—a central focus of Jordan's platform the last several years—Jordan has already indicated an extensive campaign to investigate issues with the Department of Homeland Security's handling of the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Some members are already openly floating the prospect of possible impeachment proceedings against sitting DHS Director Alejandro Mayorkas.

Big Tech, however, is likely to be his biggest focus—particularly over conservative concerns that personal information is being actively surveilled by the U.S. government.

"My job is to come here and fight for the American people," Jordan said in an interview on the conservative, Philadelphia-based Dom Giordano Program on Monday. "We're going to do what we told them we were going to do.

"The idea that the very government they pay for has been turned on them and has been targeting them for their political beliefs is just fundamentally wrong. It is not what this great country, that greatest nation ever, is about. That has to change. If that doesn't change, I think it makes it that much tougher to deal with all the other concerns we have."

In practice, however, Jordan's investigations are likely to prove nothing more than a forum for airing conservative agreements and shaping public opinion, rather than the cudgel against the administrative state he seeks to oppose, former general counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives and current Penn State law professor Stanley Brand told Newsweek.

Like Democratic efforts to release testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn over Robert Mueller's investigation into possible Russian collusion in the 2016 election—or Republicans' efforts to investigate the ATF's failures in the now-infamous Fast and Furious investigation—law enforcement has certain rights that even the interests of Congress cannot override.

In the case of Jordan's suggestion to subpoena the FBI, the Ohio congressman is likely to face legal precedents dating back well into the last century that are likely to stall him.

"There's a central problem with these investigations," said Brand. "And that is the confrontation between the Congress's authority to oversee the administration of existing laws—which is how they'll frame their requests—and the Department of Justice's position going back all the way to Attorney General Brownell under the Eisenhower administration denying to Congress any information from open criminal investigations."

"This is quickly going to descend into a shouting match over that issue," he added. "There is no easy way to force judicial resolution of those disputes. So it's just going to be a lot of screaming and yelling and a stalemate at some point when the department refuses to turn over these types of records."