In a questionable power grab, House Democrats and Nancy Pelosi managed to establish a select committee designed to investigate the federal government’s response to the coronavirus with a partisan vote on Thursday of last week. Despite outright objections from Republicans in Congress, the Democrat-led House of Representatives voted in favor of creating the panel, which they claimed will also have the power to subpoena President Trump and oversee the distribution of the billions of dollars that were included inside the coronavirus stimulus bill.
Now that Democrats voted in favor of creating the panel, they will be able to actively pursue another investigation into President Trump and the federal government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Check out what Reuters reported below:
The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives approved the creation of a special investigative panel to examine the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
By a partisan vote, with Republicans opposing the measure, the House signed off on the panel, which will have broad powers to investigate how federal dollars are being spent, U.S. preparedness and Trump administration deliberations. It will be able to issue subpoenas as it conducts its probes.
Nancy Pelosi flirted with the idea of creating such a committee to investigate President Trump earlier this month, arguing that the billions of dollars to be allocated by the committee within the coronavirus stimulus bill will be distributed in accordance with information from health experts.
“With over $2 trillion in emergency relief, we need to ensure those dollars are spent carefully and effectively.”
“The committee will be empowered to examine all aspects of the federal response to coronavirus, and to assure that the taxpayers’ dollars are being wisely and efficiently spent to save lives, deliver relief and benefit our economy,” Pelosi continued.
On the other hand, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has already begun to pursue what he described as a “9/11 style commission” to determine whether or not several warnings from the World Health Organization were ignored by President Trump and his administration.
“We are right now going through our intelligence holdings. What did the intelligence community make us aware of at the end of last year or earlier this year? Other committees are doing analyses,” Schiff said.
“It is very important, I think, in reviewing the intelligence component to this to realize the intelligence piece is just one piece of the warnings coming to the administration. A lot of those warnings were in the public domain. They came from public health organizations, like WHO or CDC or his own National Security Council, and ignored those warnings,” he added.
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