Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan threatened Sunday to cut the FBI’s funding in the wake of FBI whistleblower testimony and Special Counsel John Durham’s report.
Jordan appeared on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” to speak with host Maria Bartiromo about his plans for the FBI as Chair of the House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. (RELATED: Weaponization Hearing Devolves Into Chaos As Representatives Repeatedly Interrupt Each Other)
“What are you going to do about it? We just spoke with Kevin McCarthy about his call with Christopher Wray. It is what is is: Wray is still running the FBI. You’ve said you want to use the appropriations process to fix this. How will that fix things?” Bartiromo asked.
“Well, in the end, money always gets people’s attention. And so, what we’re going to have to do is say, ‘Hey, FBI, you can’t use federal tax dollars, you can’t use the American tax dollars for this kind of activity.’ We got to limit how they spend the money,” Jordan replied.
“So we have to use the appropriations [process]. That’s the power that the Founders wanted the legislative branch — and in particular the House, where, constitutionally, every spending bill, every tax bill, has to originate in the House — they wanted that body, which stands for election every two years, to be the body closest to the people deciding how we spend the money. So we have to exercise our authority, the power of the purse, to limit what the federal government, what the FBI and Justice Department, are doing to the American people,” Jordan continued.
“So that appropriations process is underway now. When will we see a bill that actually, uh, cuts back on funding for the FBI?” Bartiromo asked as a follow up.
“Speaker McCarthy and Republicans have committed to doing all 12 appropriations bills that fund the government over the next several months. I think the first one will be coming out in the next couple weeks. We’ve been meeting with the appropriations staff, our staff on the Judiciary Committee, to work on how we can limit money, American tax dollars, being used in these ways and deal with the overall budget that the FBI and the DOJ is receiving,” Jordan said.
Multiple FBI whistleblowers testified in front of the Weaponization Committee Thursday about the FBI’s alleged misconduct and the bureau’s retaliation against the whistleblowers for speaking out publicly.
The Durham report was published in full Monday and described how the FBI used “uncorroborated intelligence” to investigate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Special Counsel John Durham said the FBI did not maintain “strict fidelity to the law,” which the FBI conceded in a statement shortly after the report came out.