The Deep State needs more oversight

When the dust clears on the Speaker’s race, the single most critical role House Republicans will play, beyond stifling the Democrat agenda from the Senate, is in oversight. 

And no area more merits more oversight than the Deep State. The Twitter Files have revealed in stunning detail a successful bid by it to manipulate public opinion at mass scale by imposing a censorship regime on all of Big Tech. This scandal—a conspiracy to shackle speech in violation of the First Amendment—deserves a congressional probe to reveal the collusion between myriad government agencies and tech platforms, hold the perpetrators to account, and propose laws to stop it from ever happening again. But this is one scandal among many from our Deep State. Numerous federal agencies have demonstrated a level of politicization and weaponization so deep and widespread that it demands a much more expansive investigation—one that should culminate in a radical restructuring of the entire security apparatus.

Consider just a few of the many areas ripe for investigation – many of which we’ve discussed right here at Straight Arrow News: The Deep State’s inflation of the domestic violent extremist threat—under which it’s equated “MAGA” with “terrorist.”

The FBI’s suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop and seeming unwillingness to pursue related investigations, including into how President Joe might be implicated in corrupt foreign influence-peddling with our worst adversaries—while pursuing, along with DOJ, those who dared to look into Ashley Biden’s diary. The DOJ’s pursuit of parents critical of draconian COVID-19 policies and CRT as terrorists. The unprecedented Mar-a-Lago raid. And the DOJ/FBI’s hyper-political pursuit of Republican members of Congress, state legislators, and numerous others in connection with January 6.

And then there’s Russiagate itself and all of its related scandals, from FISA abuse, to the jihads against Michael Flynn and others, to recent revelations that the Department of Justice was snooping on congressional investigators, trying to get them off the tail of Russiagate.

These are just some of many threads that when pulled, show a national security and law enforcement apparatus willing to use and abuse its awesome powers to target dissenters from prevailing ruling-class orthodoxy and protect its own – pursuing conservatives on the very grounds they refused to pursue the likes of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and others.

The security state is the tip of the spear of a ruling-class war on wrongthink that casts dissenters as terrorists, And aims to silence them by censorship and coercion, or even criminalization. 

Some seem to know what time it is. To their credit, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee telegraphed an interest in pursuing many of these scandals in a November 2022 report on FBI and DOJ politicization.

Recently, others in the House have started to come around to the idea of a Church-style Committee – a reference to the 1970s-era investigation into the weaponization and abusive practices of the intelligence apparatus, particularly domestically. 

Though not fleshed out, proponents of a new Church Committee would seem to be calling for a panel either under the Judiciary Committee, or that like the Old Church Committee, would cut across jurisdictions as a select committee – and which would be fully empowered to get to the bottom of the Deep State’s abuses, extending far beyond the FBI and DOJ.

House Republicans must commit themselves to exposing the Deep State’s corruption and lawlessness, holding the perps to account, and deterring any such conduct going forward. National security and law enforcement agencies run amok, pose an existential threat to our liberty and justice. As the late, great Angelo Codevilla, who was there at the Church committee, an expert in intelligence community corruption his years serving on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, put it, “America’s Intelligence agencies are the deep state’s deepest part, and the most immediate threat to representative government.” 

Codevilla also said, of the intelligence agencies, that “the business they’re in, which involves surveillance, is uniquely dangerous, because surveillance is inherently a political weapon.” 

A police state turned on citizens who dare to question the state, armed with the most awesome surveillance powers in the history of mankind, would mean tyranny. Any committee that threatens the Deep State’s power and privilege will face its wrath. Its personnel will face an onslaught from Deep State allies in government and the private sector, and its corporate media stenographers. 

Of course that we had a Church Committee decades ago yet find ourselves living through this present era, demonstrates such committees are no panacea. A modern-day Church Committee even if executed to perfection will not alone fix what ails us. But establishing such a committee must be done if we’re to have transparency, without which there can be no accountability, and needed change.