Last Friday night, after a dayslong stalemate that often grew contentious, Congressman Kevin McCarthy finally garnered enough votes to become the next Speaker of the House after agreeing to a series of concessions to Republican holdouts from the House Freedom Caucus. When voting began last Tuesday, 20 Republicans opposed McCarthy.
But by Friday, only a handful of holdouts remained. During the 15th round of voting, however, the few remaining holdouts voted “present” rather than choosing someone else, allowing McCarthy to gain the majority of votes over Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Throughout the days of negotiations, McCarthy reached an agreement with most of his critics that could potentially mark major improvements to the House, including establishing a Church-style committee to investigate the “weaponization of the federal government.”
Friday evening, Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that McCarthy was appointing him to sit on the “Church Committee” investigating possible federal government abuses and vowed to release any “illegal or unconstitutional” findings.
Massie told Carlson that much of the investigation would “play out down in the SCIF” (Secure Compartmented Information Facility). Given that, Massie explained, the public has to trust the people placed on the committee. He added that if something “fishy” is found, “I’ll come out of the SCIF and tell you.”
Most of the work will happen behind closed doors since the information is classified. But Massie told Tucker, “If we find anything illegal or unconstitutional, we will bring it forward.”
The creation of a new Church Committee was prompted in part by the revelations from the ongoing Twitter Files, most notably the installments that showed how the FBI worked to censor Twitter users and tried to discredit the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop before the 2020 presidential election.
Massie said during their meetings with McCarthy, the Freedom Caucus fought to make sure the committee “wasn’t going to be a show committee” and would have “full jurisdiction” beyond the FBI to any other “3-letter agency.”
Watch Massie’s interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight below.
McCarthy agrees to place Rep-elect Thomas Massie on Church Committee | Fox News Video
