Report: House Republicans Seek Select Group for Probes

House conservatives have long been promised to quickly launch oversight investigations after the Republican-controlled Congress convenes Tuesday.

But for that to be accomplished, the presumptive choice to become House speaker must be onboard for planning.

According to Politico, House Republicans have recently upped their "demands" on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., seemingly the odds-on choice to win the speaker gavel next week, by requesting a select committee to investigate a number of targets — including President Biden's son, Hunter Biden, the FBI, IRS, Department of Justice, and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

There also might be calls for the select committee to delve deeper into the Jan. 6, 2021 unrest at the Capitol, in terms of outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's role with handling in-house security, or the apparent supporters of then-President Donald Trump being jailed after the Capitol rally.

The select committee would likely be separate from oversight committees set to be chaired by Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and James Comer, R-Ky., Politico reported.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, didn't reveal which House members would occupy the select committee. Instead, he said the interested parties had "good conversations" with the incoming committee chairs.

"It needs to be targeted the right way," Roy told Politico, regarding the prospective GOP investigations. "You don't get many bites at the apple. You've got to get it done right."

For its discussions with anonymous Republican lawmakers, Politico reported of general visions of a select committee resembling the 1970s-era Church Committee — helmed by then-Democratic Idaho Sen. Frank Church — which "conducted a landmark investigation that uncovered significant surveillance abuses among the intelligence community and the IRS, leading to the formation of the Senate Intelligence Committee."

However, given today's partisan political landscape, it might be difficult — if not implausible — to replicate the bipartisan structure of the Church Committee from a half-century ago.

As a prime example, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., offered a derisive assessment about the Republican-led Oversight Committee for 2023, reportedly characterizing that group as a "truth squad in the sense that [us Democrats] will have to debunk conspiracy theories."

On the flip side, a Church Committee might be the only hope for bringing reform to the FBI, with that agency taking a number of hits lately from the "Twitter Files" exposé.

"You're almost going to have to have a Church-style investigation to reform the FBI," McCarthy recently told Fox Business, according to Politico.