Committee on the Judiciary 117th Congress House Judiciary Committee Republicans

Table Of Content

• 2024 (118th Congress)
• Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust
• Republicans have accused Garland of misleading Congress about the Hunter Biden investigation.
• Subcommittees
• Search for Legislation
• Jim Jordan, the committee chairman, has wrestled his way to power on the right.
• Main Office Location
• Nadler, Castro Raise Competition Concerns with Disney-FOX-WBD Joint Sports Streaming Venture

In August 2022, he signed off on a search of Mr. Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, to retrieve sensitive government documents the former president had brought there and refused to return. In November, he appointed a special counsel to take over both that investigation and the election inquiry against the former president, which culminated in two indictments of Mr. Trump this summer. Instead, they are incorporating the claims into the case they are building against President Biden and his administration. The contrast between Representative Jim Jordan and Garland, in terms of tone and volume, is striking.

2024 (118th Congress)

Doug Collins, a Republican from Georgia's 9th congressional district, became ranking member and served from 2019 to 2020. In early 2020, Collins stepped down from his leadership position when he became a candidate in the 2020 special election held to replace retiring U.S. Under House Republican rules, members must relinquish leadership positions if they launch a bid for another office.[3] Collins was succeeded as ranking member by Jordan, who represents Ohio's 4th congressional district, but who has never taken a bar examination or practiced law.

Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust

Mr. Garland has rebuked claims that he blocked federal prosecutors from expanding the inquiry into the president’s son to include a greater range of crimes, and he has sought to restore the department’s reputation as independent from politics. They contend that Mr. Garland and David C. Weiss, the special counsel and U.S. attorney in Delaware assigned to the case, have been less than forthcoming with Congress about the aggressiveness and independence of the investigation. Mr. Garland, a former federal appellate judge known for his circumspect and soft-spoken demeanor, took a more aggressive approach than during past hearings, alarmed by relentless attacks against his department. Countering their claims, he denounced escalating threats Trump supporters have directed against prosecutors, including the special counsel Jack Smith, and F.B.I. agents, prompting significant increases in security. House Republicans view Mr. Garland as a linchpin as they seek to bolster an impeachment inquiry into President Biden that is grounded, thus far, in inconclusive evidence that he profited from the business dealings of his son, Hunter. They have suggested Mr. Garland also might face impeachment, or contempt charges, for not fully answering their questions or providing access to documents and witnesses they have demanded.

Republicans have accused Garland of misleading Congress about the Hunter Biden investigation.

The congressman has been shouting rapid-fire assertions about White House interference in the Hunter Biden investigation, without offering concrete evidence to support his charges. Garland, speaking haltingly and quietly, is refusing to respond other than citing what is already in the public record. The theory that President Biden intervened to protect his son, widely trumpeted by House Republicans and amplified by conservative news media, is a prime motivator behind the impeachment inquiry begun by Speaker Kevin McCarthy under pressure from the right flank of his party. Republican committee members had signaled that they would grill Mr. Garland about his role in the later stages of a five-year investigation into Hunter Biden. It appeared to be nearing an end this summer until it imploded in July over the terms of the plea deal between Mr. Biden and the U.S. attorney for Delaware, David C. Weiss. Republicans focused their questions on the Hunter Biden inquiry, seeing the attorney general as having played a critical role in what they have described as the Justice Department’s lenient treatment of President Biden and his son.

Subcommittees

Mr. Durham’s muted findings disappointed some Trump supporters, who had been led to believe by Trump and conservative news outlets like Fox News that he would charge senior Democratic leaders and law enforcement and intelligence agency leaders with crimes. Any legislation that carries a possibility for criminal or civil penalties can be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, so its legislative workload is substantial. The committee’s weighty agenda has frequently placed it in a central role in American politics, most notably during its consideration of impeachment charges against presidents of the United States in both 1974 and 1998.

Search for Legislation

In the 115th Congress, the chairman of the committee was Republican Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, and the ranking minority member was initially Democrat John Conyers of Michigan. On November 26, 2017, Conyers stepped down from his position as ranking member, while he faced an ethics investigation.[2] On November 28, 2017, Jerrold Nadler of New York was named as acting ranking member. De Moraes swiftly included Musk in the ongoing investigation of digital militias, and launched a separate investigation into whether Musk engaged in obstruction, criminal organization and incitement.

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The committee is responsible for considering and reporting legislation related to these areas, as well as conducting oversight of the executive branch and the federal judiciary. The committee also has the authority to impeach federal officials, including the President, and to consider articles of impeachment. House Republicans have also alleged that the Justice Department slow-walked a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden.

Main Office Location

” asked Mr. Cohen, suggesting that the decision to not bring charges proved the government’s impartiality. Republicans have peppered Mr. Garland with a wide range of questions during his other recent appearances, but on Wednesday they mostly focused on the Hunter Biden inquiry. In response, Mr. Garland cited a promise he had made to senators during his confirmation in 2021 — that he would not interfere with the work of Mr. Weiss to avoid any appearance that he was influencing an investigation into his boss’s son. “Did you ask him what had changed, that made him now need to be made a special counsel?

Mr. Garland, bound by longstanding Justice Department practice, is expected to decline to discuss nonpublic details about ongoing investigations. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland spent more than 40 years trying to transcend partisan combat in the apolitical pursuit of prosecutorial and judicial independence. But over the past seven years, he has found himself embroiled in a succession of bruising political controversies. Whether these discrepancies between the statements of Mr. Shapley and Mr. Weiss and Mr. Garland are mere misunderstandings or something more nefarious is the question at the heart of the Republicans’ case against the Justice Department. At the heart of the issue are assurances Mr. Weiss and Mr. Garland have given to lawmakers that Mr. Weiss had ultimate authority over the Hunter Biden case and when and where to bring charges.

He rose quickly through a succession of top department posts in the late 1980s and mid-1990s, taking over the critical post of principal deputy attorney general in 1994, handling many of the department’s day-to-day operations. In that role, Mr. Garland oversaw domestic terrorism cases, including the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, taking the unusual step of personally representing the government at preliminary hearings of defendants like Timothy J. McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols, who were ultimately convicted. Nadler says a “Trump-like” Republican presidential candidate has proposed abolishing the F.B.I. That’s probably a reference to Vivek Ramaswamy, who said in a speech that he would transfer 15,000 agents to other law enforcement organizations and fire the “back office” people.

No single member of Congress has done more to push House Republicans to the right, forcing more mainstream and establishment figures in the party to cede ground to the arch-conservative wing. These days, his hearings include a level of partisanship and hostility that is notable even by today’s hyper-polarized standards. It began in 2016, when Mr. Garland — an appellate judge widely regarded as moderate — was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama, only to be blocked by Senate Republicans in a brazen and ultimately successful power play to stack the court with conservatives. When Mr. Weiss eventually asked for special counsel status, the Justice Department says Mr. Garland approved his request quickly. Instead, Mr. Weiss said he had discussions with Justice Departmental officials about a potential appointment as a “special attorney,” which would allow him to bypass the standard chain of command and file charges against Hunter Biden outside his district. Mr. Shapley also said that Mr. Weiss had been turned down when he sought special counsel status, which would have allowed him greater flexibility in handling the case.

The House Judiciary Committee usually sends the greatest number of substantive bills to the House Floor each year. Today, the Committee is at the forefront of some of the most significant issues facing our nation, including protecting Constitutional freedoms and civil liberties, oversight of the U.S. The House Judiciary Committee usually sends the greatest number of substantive bills to the House floor each year. Mr. Garland’s testimony took place at what had been, in years past, a routine oversight hearing that would typically center on policy, crime, law enforcement initiatives and civil rights — issues that were largely jettisoned for attacks by Republicans and counterattacks by Democrats.

Following through would be a departure from their refusal in the spring to appoint a temporary replacement to the Judiciary committee while Feinstein was out for months to recover from a shingles infection. Feinstein’s absence meant Democrats didn’t have enough votes to get judicial nominees out of committee without Republican support. On top of the special counsel investigations, Republicans are likely to bring up what they claim to be the F.B.I.’s spying of parents on school boards and unfair targeting of Catholics. Mr. Garland is appearing before the committee as part of a precedent on Capitol Hill that obligates top administration officials to submit to questioning by Congress at least once or twice a year.

The government’s two-pronged criminal case against the president’s son, on the cusp of being resolved over the summer without any prison time for him, is now grinding ahead with no clear resolution in sight. The Justice Department’s investigation of Hunter Biden, which began more than five years ago under President Donald J. Trump, has moved from a sideshow obsession of the Republican right to a central pillar of the party’s impeachment inquiry into President Biden. When Matt Gaetz, the bellicose Republican congressman from Florida, began a blistering attack on the attorney general, Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, raised the Justice Department’s sex-trafficking investigation into Mr. Gaetz that, ultimately, resulted in no charges.