Tag: mike turner
Incoming House Intelligence Chair Punts On Hunter Biden Investigation

Incoming House Intelligence Chair Punts On Hunter Biden Investigation

Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has pledged to steer the committee away from politically charged investigations, including a Hunter Biden probe, and focus instead on its “areas of jurisdiction” — specifically, national security.

Turner’s remarks stood in stark contrast with the rabid rhetoric espoused by the fringe arm of the House GOP, who have since vowed baseless congressional investigations into President Biden’s family and other unfounded grievances in the forthcoming 118th Congress.

On November 17, barely a day after the major networks called the House for the Republican Party, Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) — ranking Republicans in House Oversight and Judicial Committees, which they are expected to chair come January — announced imminent investigations into the president’s family.

"The president's participation in enriching his family is, in a word, abuse of the highest order," Comer said without citing any evidence. "I want to be clear: This is an investigation of Joe Biden, and that's where our focus will be next Congress."

Taking a step back from the performative effort that Comer gleefully christened “the Joe Biden investigation,” Turner told ABC News host Martha Raddatz in an interview that under his leadership, the intelligence panel would ditch partisanship for oversight.

“Congressman Turner, do you view [Hunter Biden’s laptop] as a matter for the intelligence community? What are [Republicans] looking at there?” Raddatz pressed Turner on Sunday’s broadcast of ABC News’ This Week.

“So, I think, you know, one thing that’s going to be very, very positive about this Congress is: we’re going to get back to the committees working again,” Turner replied.

“And what the committee is working on, they’re going to be focusing on their areas of jurisdiction. We’re going to take the intelligence committee from what was an impeachment committee, a partisan committee, back to national security.

“There certainly are issues with respect to Hunter Biden’s laptop that are going to have to be looked at,” Turner added.

“Impeachment issues, you believe?” Raddatz asked, alluding to the egregious threats of impeachment that prominent right-wing luminaries and their allies have dangled since Donald Trump lost the 2020 elections.

“The impeachment issue was Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi. And where our committee was taken off the rails,” Turner replied, referring to the 2019 and 2021 impeachments of then-President Trump.

However, Turner glossed over GOP firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and House Resolution 57, an article of impeachment she filed on January 21, 2021, barely a day after Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States of America.

“Our committee is going to focus on national security and our adversaries. We have real adversaries where the committee hasn’t been focused again,” Turner continued, taking care to sidestep the Hunter Biden issue.

Turner’s comments mirrored his responses in an interview with the New York Times last month, where he promised to focus and work with his Democratic colleagues on national security oversight.

“We need to do the job that we were intended to do,” Turner told the Times. “I believe that there is a hunger between both sides of the aisle — members who are national security-focused, intelligence community-focused — to get this committee back on track."

The Republican also told Raddatz that the committee aims to provide the U.S. intelligence community with “the tools that we need” to “move at the speed of our adversaries,” rejecting Greene’s push to defund the Justice Department for investigating Trump’s novel heist of thousands of government documents.

Trump has repeatedly lambasted the FBI for seizing the stolen documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate, the Justice Department for reviewing them for violations of federal laws, and Special Counsel Jack Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to take over two Trump criminal investigations after the ex-president announced a 2024 presidential bid.

“You people have to fight. You have to fight. You have to be strong,” Trump remarked at a November 18 address at his Florida abode — echoing his incendiary January 6, 2021, call to “fight,” which incited a mob of his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol shortly after.

We Cannot Afford Cynicism Now

We Cannot Afford Cynicism Now

Our 11-year-old grandson is with us for the week, and we are having the sort of conversations that indicate the learning has just begun — for me.

He and his parents recently completed a move of more than 2,000 miles. This is quite the adjustment for all involved, including their 4-year-old dog, Rumple. I hadn’t considered how disorienting it might be for a dog born on a tropical island to find himself suddenly in the Midwest, but then I’m not Rumple’s boy.

Clayton is mindful of his pup’s moods. When I mentioned how nice it is to have his steadfast companion during this transition, he shook his head and smiled.

“It’s a transition for both of us,” he said. “Rumple and I are more like an ecosystem. We’re helping each other be strong.”

Clayton was talking about his relationship with his beloved dog. I heard a new way to look at the pitfalls of cynicism.

Our conversation occurred only two days after a gunman had killed nine people and injured more than two dozen in a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, about a three-hour drive from our home in Cleveland. The gunman used a .223-caliber high-capacity rifle to shoot into a crowd at a popular nightspot at 1:05 a.m. He would have killed hundreds if not for the quick work of five Dayton police officers and a sergeant. Within 30 seconds, the gunman was dead.

Dayton became the second deadly mass shooting in America in less than a day, and the third in a week. Thirteen hours earlier, a gunman with an assault rifle killed 22 people and injured dozens at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. A few days before that, another gunman with an assault-style killed two children and one adult and injured 13 others at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Northern California.

Investigations are ongoing, as are theories about motives, which is a loathsome word. As if there is ever a reason for innocent people to be gunned down.

My husband, Senator Sherrod Brown, and I spent much of Sunday in Dayton, with various community leaders and residents. I will never forget listening to several members of Dayton’s police force describe for us what it’s like to be first responders at the scene of a mass shooting. It’s war zone triage. Each victim is examined, and responders make split-second decisions about which ones can be saved, sometimes against a backdrop of pleas from victims’ friends and loved ones begging for a second glance.

That evening, during a vigil of hundreds in Dayton, the crowd shouted down Republican Governor Mike DeWine with a simple, profound chant: “Do something.”

Two days later, he announced at a news conference that he would try.

“I understand that anger, for it’s impossible to make sense out of what is senseless,” DeWine said. “Some chanted ‘do something’ and they were absolutely right.”

As NPR’s Andy Chow reported, DeWine introduced a “‘safety protection order'” that would allow a judge “to confiscate firearms from people who pose a threat to themselves or others. His plan would also require background checks for all gun purchases and transfers with some exemptions, strengthen penalties on crimes involving guns, and increase access to mental health treatment.”

Another Ohio Republican, Rep. Mike Turner, who is a former mayor of Dayton, delivered his own seismic shift, announcing his support “for restricting military-style weapon sales, magazine limits, and red flag legislation.”

DeWine will likely face steep opposition from Republican majorities in the statehouse, where a current bill under consideration would eliminate permits, training and background checks for those who carry concealed guns. So far, Turner is virtually the lone Republican voice of gun reform in Congress.

Both of these Republican men are also on the receiving end of skepticism and outright anger from liberals who’ve long championed gun legislation reform. I understand the cynicism, but I’m not on board. As I’ve written many times in the past, we can’t ask people to change and not give them the chance to do so. They’re going to need us.

For years, I’ve thought of cynicism as just another word for laziness, and a blight on one’s soul. But since that conversation with my grandson about his “ecosystem” of a relationship with his dog, I see it as something far worse.

Cynicism is not just about our mood, or a way to avoid another disappointment. It’s a betrayal of the people who need us, the ones we swear we’re fighting for and the ones we love. It weakens us as a community and a country, and leaves us untethered to hope.

If we keep acting like we expect nothing, that’s exactly what we’ll get.

What a way to live.

What a way to keep dying.

 

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University’s school of journalism. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.