The Weaponization Subcommittee — formally the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government — was created by the House of Representatives in January 2023 and presented by its supporters as a second Church Committee. John Kiriakou, who wrote about it in Consortium News the day of this interview, rejects the comparison while endorsing the goal.[1]
“I am 1,000% in favor of creating a Church Committee 2. This is not a Church Committee 2.”[1]
The objection
The chair is Jim Jordan, whom Kiriakou identifies as “a far-right congressman from Ohio, the former wrestling coach at Ohio State University,” and the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Its declared subject is “the FBI’s targeting of conservatives” — conservative parents speaking at school board meetings, the bureau’s treatment of Donald Trump, “or targeting anybody deemed to be conservative.”[2][3]
“That’s not what the Church Committee did.” The original was bipartisan “with intellectual heavyweights on both sides,” and it examined crimes committed by what Kiriakou means by the deep state: “the CIA, the FBI, NSA, the Department of the Army, and associated intelligence organizations.”[3][4]
Composition
Speaker Kevin McCarthy appointed nine Republicans and allowed for six Democrats; the Democrats said they would not participate. The subcommittee itself was created on a straight party-line vote — “221, all Republicans, to 211, all Democrats.”[5][6]
Against that Kiriakou sets the original’s membership: Frank Church, “an intellectual giant who ran for president in 1976,” and Senator Philip Hart of Michigan, for whom the Hart Senate office building is named.[6][7]
Why he insists it is not partisan
Pressed by his host not to make the discussion another round of Republican-bashing, Kiriakou agreed and said the opposite risk was the real one: “my intent here is not to bash Republicans, because the Democrats are equally guilty of all of these things. This is not a partisan issue.”[8]
His evidence is the Espionage Act count he uses elsewhere — three Americans charged for speaking to the press between 1917 and 2009, eight under Barack Obama alone — and the conclusion he draws from it: “this is not a Democrats-are-good, Republicans-are-bad situation. It’s that all of our elected officials are bad on this issue.”[8][9]