Conservative Leaders Oppose the Gross Abuse of Authority by the January 6th Select Committee

The leaders of dozens of conservative organizations representing millions of America’s grassroots conservative voters have issued a “Memo to the Movement” detailing how the

January 6th Select Committee is a gross abuse of congressional power against American citizens – private individuals and Members of Congress. It is an assault on the rule of law which is a bedrock principle of our form of government. We emphatically condemn it and urge all Americans who believe in a system of justice that is fair and equal to condemn it as well.

Full text of the letter and list of signers as of CHQ post time follows:

January 3, 2022

Washington, DC

Conservatives are opposed to the ongoing abuse of power demonstrated by the January 6th Select Committee, which continues to weaponize Congress’ investigative authority against American citizens – private individuals and Members of Congress – in unprecedented ways.

Based on the House resolution that formed the Select committee, the committee, made up of Nancy Pelosi’s handpicked henchmen, is not only improperly constituted, but so are its official actions – including formal depositions, which can no longer be the basis for further action.

At the outset of the committee’s formation, Chairman Bennie Thompson sent letters to 35 telecom, email, and social media companies instructing them to preserve call details, text messages, location records, and the content of posts for a list of individuals which reportedly include Members of Congress, members of the Trump family, and a host of regular Americans who may have been “otherwise involved” – in what, it is not clear. The records request, which is supposedly related to the events of January 6th, for some reason goes all the way back to April 2020.

Thompson didn’t bother to say who, exactly, he was after. “We have quite an exhaustive list of people,” Thompson told CNN. “I won’t tell you who they are.” And he made clear in his letters to Verizon, AT&T, and other companies, that he did not want them notifying the users that their data is being turned over to the government.

In short, Thompson issued a surveillance order for a secret list of people who haven’t necessarily done anything wrong, and who Democrats want to be prohibited from knowing that the intimate details of their digital lives are being harvested by Congress.

The committee has since escalated its violations by referring criminal contempt charges to the Department of Justice for those who refuse to comply – including, for example, for former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, whose actions have no demonstrated connection to the events of January 6th. The DOJ, which has not pursued a criminal contempt charge in roughly 40 years despite receiving many of them, has acted in a nakedly partisan manner in issuing charges against Steve Bannon.

The DOJ must now determine whether it is going to continue to be a partisan lapdog for this illegitimate House entity. We call on the Department to put a halt to this nonsense, and to refuse to bring the criminal contempt charges sought by the committee against Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark, neither of whom has engaged in criminal contempt of Congress.

Not content with bullying and threatening anyone who does not comply to their satisfaction with whatever the committee decides it wants, the committee is now threatening subpoenas against their own House colleagues, a wild and unprecedented breach of protocol, decorum, and House tradition, as well as an assault on the Constitutionally protected “speech and debate” clause rights of members of Congress, and thus on the Constitution itself.

All of this, it should be noted, is occurring against the backdrop of an investigation already completed by federal law enforcement. The FBI – which seized banking, phone, social media, and geolocation records from the nearly 600 people they arrested and charged, found no evidence of any central coordination or organization.

According to senior law enforcement officials, “90 to 95 percent of these are one-off cases . . . there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.” Moreover, investigations demanded by Democratic House members into Republican House members, conducted by both the inspector general of the Capitol Police and the Government Accountability Office, have turned up nothing.

The actions of the January 6th Committee then, are clearly not in pursuit of a law enforcement or investigatory end – that work has already been completed and turned up nothing. Instead, it is designed purely to prosecute a political agenda, to name and shame individuals who haven’t done anything criminal, but because they were remotely connected to President Trump or the event itself.

In 1957, the Supreme Court held that “there is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure” or to engage in conduct “where the predominant result can only be an invasion of the private rights of individuals.” House Democrats should take heed.

The January 6th Select Committee is a gross abuse of congressional power against American citizens – private individuals and Members of Congress. It is an assault on the rule of law which is a bedrock principle of our form of government. We emphatically condemn it and urge all Americans who believe in a system of justice that is fair and equal to condemn it as well.

Organizations listed for identification purposes only

The Honorable Edwin Meese III

Attorney General

President Ronald Reagan (1985-1988)

David N. Bossie

President

Citizens United

The Honorable Bob McEwen (R-OH)

U.S. House Committee on Rules

Former Member

The Honorable Jim DeMint

Chairman, Conservative Partnership Institute

Member, US Senate (SC 2005-2013)

The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell

Chairman, Conservative Action Project (CAP)

and Constitutional Congress, Inc.

The Honorable Ken Cuccinelli, II

Senior Fellow

Center for Renewing America

The Honorable George K Rasley Jr

Managing Editor

ConservativeHQ.com

Jenny Beth Martin

Chairman

Tea Party Patriots Citizen Fund

Thomas E. McClusky

Principal

Greenlight Strategies, LLC

Alfred S. Regnery

President

Republic Book Publishers

The Honorable T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr.

Chief Domestic Advisor

President Ronald Reagan (1987-1988)

Cleta Mitchell, Esq.

The Honorable Tony Perkins

President

Family Research Council

Penny Y. Nance

President & CEO

Concerned Women for America

Lori Roman

President

ACRU Action Fund

Noah Wall

Executive Vice President

FreedomWorks

Scott T. Parkinson

Thomas Fitton

President, Judicial Watch, Inc.

President, Council for National Policy

Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin (Ret.)

Executive Vice President

Family Research Council

The Honorable Briscoe Cain

State Representative

Texas House of Representatives

Rod D. Martin

Founder & CEO

The Martin Organization, Inc.

Christina Murphy Lusk

President

The Martin Foundation

Sherri R. Martin

Executive Vice President

The Martin Organization, Inc.

Karen England

Capitol Resource Institute

Capitol Resource Institute

Ron Pearson

Executive Director

Conservative Victory Fund

Seton Motley

President

Less Government

C. Preston Noell III

President

Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.

Richard Wright

Owner

R & S LLC

Floyd Brown

Founder

The Western Journal

Mario Navarro da Costa

Director, Washington Bureau

Tradition, Family, Property

Ben Case

Kevin Freeman

Founder

NSIC Institute

G. Eric Georgatos

Executive Producer

America Can We Talk?

Sheryl Kaufman

Board Member

Americans for Limited Government

Robert Chambers

Executive Vice President

AFA Action

Lee Beaman

CEO

Beaman Ventures

Joan Holt Lindsey

President

Lindsey Communications

Elaine Donnelly

President

Center for Military Readiness

Ambassador Henry F. Cooper

Pres. Reagan's Chief Defense and Space Negotiator, Former SDI Director

The Honorable Mike Hill

Former Member

Florida State Representative

Dr. Chris Hughes

Founder & Chairman

The Citizens for America Foundation

Tim Macy

Chairman

Gun Owners of America

James L. Martin

Founder/Chairman

60 Plus Association

Jack Park

Conservative Activist and Donor

Law Offices of Jack Park

• January 6 committee

• abuse of authority

• Nancy Pelosi

• Donald Trump

• 2020 Election

• Chairman Bennie Thompson

• Mark Meadows

• Jeffrey Clark

• data collection

• privacy