- Bearing Drift - https://bearingdrift.com -

All Four Virginia Congressional Republicans Refuse to Enforce January 6 Committee Subpoena of Bannon

The House of Representatives voted today to enforce the subpoena sent by the January 6 Select Committee to Steve Bannon for him to testify about what information he has regarding the insurrection. Bannon has defied the subpoena citing a bizarrely expansive definition of executive privilege (one with which President Biden disagrees). Very few Republicans had the strength to put country before party and insist on the truth coming out.

None of them were from Virginia.

All four Republican members of Congress from the Commonwealth (Ben Cline, Bob Good, Morgan Griffith, and Rob Wittman) voted to give Bannon – and indirectly, his fellow Trumpists up to and including the ex-president himself – a free pass for inciting, supporting, and now gloriously retconning the insurrection.

Of course, every Republican on the ballot presently for office in Richmond will pretend this doesn’t matter, since none of them are running for Congress. I disagree.

First, in the current absence of a statewide elected Republican, the four horseman of the No-pocalypse are the highest ranking elected officials in the Republican Party of Virginia – and they reveal a party willingly subservient to Donald Trump.

Second – and, if anything, more important – today’s Congressional vote was a predictor of how future Republican officials will behave – including those who would be elected on November 2.

Lest we forget, three of the four (Cline, Griffith, and Wittman) were all members of the House of Delegates less than 15 years ago. Two of them actually made their mark bucking the internal party trend (Cline opposed Plan ’13 From Outer Space [1], and Wittman opposed Bush’s bank bailout [2]). Yet Trump and his followers have rolled them both – as clear a sign as any where those looking to follow in their footsteps will go.

Meanwhile, the Governor of Texas appointed John Scott – a lawyer who briefly represented Trump in his effort to overturn last year’s election – as Texas Secretary of State (Texas Tribune [3]).

As secretary of state, Scott would oversee election administration in Texas — a task complicated in recent years by baseless claims of election fraud from Republicans in the highest levels of government, fueled by Trump.

On Nov. 13, Scott signed on as counsel to a lawsuit filed by Trump attempting to block the certification of Pennsylvania’s election.

Reminder: the power to appoint Virginia’s Secretary of State resides with the Governor. All electoral boards will be under a majority of the party that holds the Governor’s office.

Are we sure we want it to be [4] this guy [5]?