Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) on April 17, 2023 (Lev Radin/Shutterstock.com)
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y) is blaming Speaker Mike Johnson for the rejection of an oversight provision she included in the annual defense policy bill the House wants to pass next week .
“I just walked out of a briefing on this issue this morning CONFIRMING everything I posted yesterday, that, yes, in fact, the Speaker is blocking my provision to root out the illegal weaponization that led to Crossfire Hurricane, Arctic Frost, and more,” said Stefanik on X. “He is siding with [Rep.] Jamie Raskin [D-Md.] against Trump Republicans to block this provision to protect the deep state.”
Stefanik further threatened to be a vote against the defense bill if her provision remains out: “This is an easy one. This bill is DOA unless this provision gets added in as it was passed out of committee.”
Stefanik’s proposal requires the public disclosure of all “FBI counterintelligence investigations into presidential and federal candidates seeking office.” It is designed to combat what Stefanik and other Republicans consider politically motivated investigations related to Russian interference in the 2016 election and former special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the election in 2020.
Johnson denied the allegation on Monday.
“All of that is false. I don’t exactly know why Elise won’t just call me,” said Johnson, adding that he sent her a text message denying knowledge of the treatment of the provision and claiming that “it hasn’t even made it to my level.”
“The way regular order works is it has to go through a committee of jurisdiction if it is to be attached to the NDAA, and this provision she was working on, I think, is under the jurisdiction of the Judiciary,” Johnson said. “… [T]he chairs and the two ranking members of the committees of jurisdiction … at least three out of four have to agree … to put it on the bill. Well, in this case, I found out last night — it wasn’t even on my radar — that that apparently didn’t happen. I haven’t even talked to those chairmen … but apparently the two chairs and the two rankers in both chambers did not agree and so that provision was dropped from the NDAA.”
Stefanik summed up Johnson’s claim s “just more lies from the Speaker.”
“And in true to form, the Speaker texted me yesterday claiming he ‘knew nothing about it.’ Yeah right. This is his preferred tactic to tell [lawmakers] when he gets caught torpedoing the Republican agenda. It wasn’t ‘on your radar?’ This is the ONLY provision in the bill to root out the deep state rot,” Stefanik said.
She went on to argue that dropping her provision was “not regular order,” as Johnson claimed.
“Regular order is a members’ provision that passed out of committee should be heard on the floor and not struck down by a Democrat minority member in a closed-door meeting,” Stefanik said. “My provision passed out of the House Intelligence Committee, which is the committee of jurisdiction. You torpedoed this siding with Jamie Raskin. You said you would fix it, so fix it.”
Another Republican lawmaker, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.), who recently announced she was quitting the House after President Donald Trump attacked her for supporting the release of the criminal file of convicted sex trafficker (and Trump’s friend) Jeffrey Epstein, similarly blasted Johnson.
“No surprises here,” posted Greene on X. “As usual from the Speaker, promises made promises broken. We all know it.”