“For the past ten months, several nonpartisan entities interested in investigating the attack on the Capitol Building have worked diligently to determine what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. Unfortunately, the select committee Speaker Pelosi established on a nearly party-line vote has demonstrated it is more interested in pursuing a th partisan agenda to politicize the January 6th attack rather than conducting a legitimate good faith investigation into the security failures leading up to and on that day. Congress has a significant and important oversight power to secure needed information in order to legislate, however, Congress does not have enumerated constitutional powers to conduct investigations or issue subpoenas outside of that scope.”

“The issue before the House is not whether Congress should conduct oversight, but instead whether Congress has the authority to conduct this investigation for a legislative purpose. Congress’s oversight authority also does not include law enforcement powers — those powers belong to the Executive and Judicial Branch and the FBI and the US Attorney’s office are the law enforcement entities investigating the events of January 6th. The Supreme Court has agreed that: – Congress has no authority to issue a subpoena for law enforcement purposes and if Congress believes a crime has been committed, that is the purview of the judicial and executive branches of government – Congress has no authority to issue a subpoena to compel exposure for the sake of exposure because that is not deemed a valid legislative purpose – Congress may not issue a subpoena in an attempt to ‘try’ someone before a committee for any crime or wrongdoing. Speaker Pelosi’s select committee does not get to step into the shoes of law enforcement solely because it would be politically expedient” – House GOP internal memo with canned lines to help members justify to themselves voting against criminal contempt for Steve Bannon.