House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent several fiscal 2024 recommendations to the House Appropriations Committee, including one that would relocating the FBI to Huntsville, Alabama.
The Ohio Republican gave Rep. Kay Granger, Texas Republican and the Appropriations chairwoman, the list of requests that had been generated from the work of GOP lawmakers on Judiciary and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
House GOP lawmakers are sending Appropriations their recommendations, many of which are policy-oriented, for the 12 appropriations bills to fund the federal government next year.
The Washington Times reached out to the FBI for comment but did not immediately hear back.
The Committee first recommended prohibiting taxpayer dollars from being used to implement the Biden Administration’s “radical” immigration policies.
“Since President Biden took office in 2021, border officials have encountered more than 5.5 million illegal aliens along the southwest border, and the Biden Administration has released into American communities over 2 million illegal aliens encountered along the southwest border,” Mr. Jordan wrote.
These “open-border policies have led to a number of suspected terrorists entering our country. The crisis at the border is a direct result of the radical policies of President Biden and Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas, and it affects American communities all across the country,” he added.
Mr. Jordan suggested that the best way to rein in abusive federal law enforcement agencies is to eliminate any funding for the FBI that is “not absolutely essential for the agency to execute its mission.”
This would include, he wrote, “eliminating taxpayer funding for any new FBI headquarter facility and instead examining options for relocating the FBI’s headquarters outside of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.”
Mr. Jordan also recommended tying FBI funding to specific policy changes — such as requiring the bureau to record interviews — that will promote accountability and transparency.
“We recommend the FBI submit an operational plan within 90 days to move the FBI Headquarters out of the National Capital Region,” he wrote. “The operational plan should also consider the existing resources and infrastructure available at the FBI’s Redstone Arsenal Campus in Huntsville, AL.”
Mr. Jordan also describes in his letter the whistleblower testimony that his committee and its select subcommittee has received from several current and former FBI employees.
“We ask that the Appropriations Committee include language in the Justice Department appropriations bill prohibiting retaliation against FBI whistleblowers, including by prohibiting taxpayer dollars from being used to pay the salary of any Justice Department or FBI employee who is found to have retaliated against a whistleblower,” Mr. Jordan wrote.
The Ohio Republican also asked requested language in the appropriations bills banning taxpayer funds from “being used to censor Americans online or to classify speech as so-called ‘mis-, dis-, or mal-information.’”
In addition to that recommendation, he asked Mrs. Granger and her panel to eliminate taxpayer dollars for the Global Engagement Center, a State Department agency criticized by GOP lawmakers for blacklisting online conservative media outlets, and any other governmental and non-governmental entities engaged in speech suppression.
The final recommendation is squarely aimed at protecting the Second Amendment and at two recent regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
“The ATF has circumvented the will of Congress and flouted the Second Amendment. Accordingly, we recommend prohibiting taxpayer funds from being used to implement ATF radical regulations concerning pistol braces or so-called ‘ghost guns,” Mr. Jordan writes.
Texas-based U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor recently reversed the ATF ban on the agency’s ghost gun rule, which broadens the definition of a “firearm receiver” to include kits that have partially manufactured parts and are marketed to be completed into operational firearms.
Source:Washington Times
