News/Commentary

‘What the hell are my colleagues afraid of?’ Chip Roy goes off in hearing as Dems hide Trump affidavit

September 15, 2022 | | Print Article

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy tore into his Democrat House Judiciary Committee colleagues on Wednesday over their refusal to back a GOP-led effort to review the full, unredacted contents of the affidavit that was used to justify the raid on Donald Trump’s home.

Speaking before the committee, he suggested that it’s imperative Congress review the affidavit to ensure that the government isn’t abusing its power yet again.

“We should be bound together here in wanting to demand information and be able to get it. … The power of the FBI can be used and is used often to destroy lives,” he said.

As an example of this abuse, he cited Scott Smith, the Loudoun County father forcibly subdued, handcuffed, and arrested at a school board hearing last year for speaking out about his daughter’s rape by a gender-fluid boy wearing a skirt.

Following his arrest, the National School Board Association colluded with the White House to request that the Department of Justice begin branding parents like Smith domestic terrorists and taking appropriate action to rein them in.

“We will talk in a minute about a different issue, about Scott Smith from Loudoun County, who was kind of exhibit one or certainly one of several exhibits in the now fairly infamous letter from the National School Board Association in direct coordination with the White House, which led directly to the attorney general of the United States issuing a memorandum that is still in effect and under which we know from whistleblowers American citizens have been tagged as domestic terrorists,” Roy said.

“That is the power of your Federal Bureau of Investigation under the Democrat attorney general of the United States, and you’re running cover for them. And we’re sitting here right now simply wanting to see the entirety of an affidavit so that we can do our oversight duty, our job. If there’s some concern about that not being able to be seen by the public, we can march down to the SCIF right now and go look at the fully unredacted version.”

SCIF is short for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, and it refers to a secured room in the Capitol complex where members of Congress may review highly classified documents.

Continuing his remarks, Roy demanded to know why Democrats were blocking the GOP-led effort to review the affidavit for the purpose of oversight. He also reiterated his concerns about the government abusing its power.

“What in the hell are my colleagues afraid of in seeing the full, unredacted version? The American people right now are tired of seeing the power of government being used against them,” he said.

“As a former federal prosecutor in a United States Attorney’s Office, I absolutely respect the many men and women I worked with going after bad guys — something I wish my Democratic colleagues would more often like to do, by the way — but the power centralized in the FBI under the attorney general of the United States being used to target American citizens is something that the people’s House Judiciary Committee should be keenly concerned on a bipartisan basis to try to protect.”

“And again, I want to bring this back to the simple point: This is a request of information of the executive branch from a member of Congress elected by 750,000 American citizens in Arizona to say I’d like to see the entire affidavit,” he added.

Concluding his remarks, he said, “My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are against transparency. They like to use slogans — people over politics. Well, why don’t we put people over politics and actually use the power of Congress to seek the truth?”

The remarks were made a day after a magistrate judge unsealed more portions of the FBI affidavit that was used to justify the raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. However, the newly released sections weren’t very revealing.

Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat member, has for his part suggested that it wouldn’t be wise to allow members of Congress to view the full, unredacted version of the affidavit.

“Remember, what’s at stake here is the fact that if some of these documents involved human intelligence, and that information got out, people will die. If there were penetration of our signals intelligence, literally years of work could be destroyed,” he said Sunday on CNN.

“We talk about the enormous advances our Intelligence Community has made helping our Ukrainian friends. That comes about because we share intelligence. If there’s intelligence that has been shared with us by allies and that is mishandled, all of that could be in jeopardy.”

Vivek Saxena
Latest posts by Vivek Saxena (see all)

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

Latest Articles