The leaders of dozens of conservative organizations representing millions of America’s grassroots conservative voters have issued a “Memo to the Movement” detailing how the
January 6th Select Committee is a gross abuse of congressional power against American citizens – private individuals and Members of Congress. It is an assault on the rule of law which is a bedrock principle of our form of government. We emphatically condemn it and urge all Americans who believe in a system of justice that is fair and equal to condemn it as well.
Full text of the letter and list of signers as of CHQ post time follows:
January 3, 2022
Washington, DC
Conservatives are opposed to the ongoing abuse of power demonstrated by the January 6th Select Committee, which continues to weaponize Congress’ investigative authority against American citizens – private individuals and Members of Congress – in unprecedented ways.
Based on the House resolution that formed the Select committee, the committee, made up of Nancy Pelosi’s handpicked henchmen, is not only improperly constituted, but so are its official actions – including formal depositions, which can no longer be the basis for further action.
At the outset of the committee’s formation, Chairman Bennie Thompson sent letters to 35 telecom, email, and social media companies instructing them to preserve call details, text messages, location records, and the content of posts for a list of individuals which reportedly include Members of Congress, members of the Trump family, and a host of regular Americans who may have been “otherwise involved” – in what, it is not clear. The records request, which is supposedly related to the events of January 6th, for some reason goes all the way back to April 2020.
Thompson didn’t bother to say who, exactly, he was after. “We have quite an exhaustive list of people,” Thompson told CNN. “I won’t tell you who they are.” And he made clear in his letters to Verizon, AT&T, and other companies, that he did not want them notifying the users that their data is being turned over to the government.
In short, Thompson issued a surveillance order for a secret list of people who haven’t necessarily done anything wrong, and who Democrats want to be prohibited from knowing that the intimate details of their digital lives are being harvested by Congress.
The committee has since escalated its violations by referring criminal contempt charges to the Department of Justice for those who refuse to comply – including, for example, for former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, whose actions have no demonstrated connection to the events of January 6th. The DOJ, which has not pursued a criminal contempt charge in roughly 40 years despite receiving many of them, has acted in a nakedly partisan manner in issuing charges against Steve Bannon.
The DOJ must now determine whether it is going to continue to be a partisan lapdog for this illegitimate House entity. We call on the Department to put a halt to this nonsense, and to refuse to bring the criminal contempt charges sought by the committee against Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark, neither of whom has engaged in criminal contempt of Congress.
Not content with bullying and threatening anyone who does not comply to their satisfaction with whatever the committee decides it wants, the committee is now threatening subpoenas against their own House colleagues, a wild and unprecedented breach of protocol, decorum, and House tradition, as well as an assault on the Constitutionally protected “speech and debate” clause rights of members of Congress, and thus on the Constitution itself.
All of this, it should be noted, is occurring against the backdrop of an investigation already completed by federal law enforcement. The FBI – which seized banking, phone, social media, and geolocation records from the nearly 600 people they arrested and charged, found no evidence of any central coordination or organization.
According to senior law enforcement officials, “90 to 95 percent of these are one-off cases . . . there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.” Moreover, investigations demanded by Democratic House members into Republican House members, conducted by both the inspector general of the Capitol Police and the Government Accountability Office, have turned up nothing.
The actions of the January 6th Committee then, are clearly not in pursuit of a law enforcement or investigatory end – that work has already been completed and turned up nothing. Instead, it is designed purely to prosecute a political agenda, to name and shame individuals who haven’t done anything criminal, but because they were remotely connected to President Trump or the event itself.
In 1957, the Supreme Court held that “there is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure” or to engage in conduct “where the predominant result can only be an invasion of the private rights of individuals.” House Democrats should take heed.
The January 6th Select Committee is a gross abuse of congressional power against American citizens – private individuals and Members of Congress. It is an assault on the rule of law which is a bedrock principle of our form of government. We emphatically condemn it and urge all Americans who believe in a system of justice that is fair and equal to condemn it as well.
Organizations listed for identification purposes only
The Honorable Edwin Meese III
Attorney General
President Ronald Reagan (1985-1988)
David N. Bossie
President
Citizens United
The Honorable Bob McEwen (R-OH)
U.S. House Committee on Rules
Former Member
The Honorable Jim DeMint
Chairman, Conservative Partnership Institute
Member, US Senate (SC 2005-2013)
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Chairman, Conservative Action Project (CAP)
and Constitutional Congress, Inc.
The Honorable Ken Cuccinelli, II
Senior Fellow
Center for Renewing America
The Honorable George K Rasley Jr
Managing Editor
ConservativeHQ.com
Jenny Beth Martin
Chairman
Tea Party Patriots Citizen Fund
Thomas E. McClusky
Principal
Greenlight Strategies, LLC
Alfred S. Regnery
President
Republic Book Publishers
The Honorable T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr.
Chief Domestic Advisor
President Ronald Reagan (1987-1988)
Cleta Mitchell, Esq.
The Honorable Tony Perkins
President
Family Research Council
Penny Y. Nance
President & CEO
Concerned Women for America
Lori Roman
President
ACRU Action Fund
Noah Wall
Executive Vice President
FreedomWorks
Scott T. Parkinson
Thomas Fitton
President, Judicial Watch, Inc.
President, Council for National Policy
Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin (Ret.)
Executive Vice President
Family Research Council
The Honorable Briscoe Cain
State Representative
Texas House of Representatives
Rod D. Martin
Founder & CEO
The Martin Organization, Inc.
Christina Murphy Lusk
President
The Martin Foundation
Sherri R. Martin
Executive Vice President
The Martin Organization, Inc.
Karen England
Capitol Resource Institute
Capitol Resource Institute
Ron Pearson
Executive Director
Conservative Victory Fund
Seton Motley
President
Less Government
C. Preston Noell III
President
Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.
Richard Wright
Owner
R & S LLC
Floyd Brown
Founder
The Western Journal
Mario Navarro da Costa
Director, Washington Bureau
Tradition, Family, Property
Ben Case
Kevin Freeman
Founder
NSIC Institute
G. Eric Georgatos
Executive Producer
America Can We Talk?
Sheryl Kaufman
Board Member
Americans for Limited Government
Robert Chambers
Executive Vice President
AFA Action
Lee Beaman
CEO
Beaman Ventures
Joan Holt Lindsey
President
Lindsey Communications
Elaine Donnelly
President
Center for Military Readiness
Ambassador Henry F. Cooper
Pres. Reagan's Chief Defense and Space Negotiator, Former SDI Director
The Honorable Mike Hill
Former Member
Florida State Representative
Dr. Chris Hughes
Founder & Chairman
The Citizens for America Foundation
Tim Macy
Chairman
Gun Owners of America
James L. Martin
Founder/Chairman
60 Plus Association
Jack Park
Conservative Activist and Donor
Law Offices of Jack Park
January 6 committee
abuse of authority
Nancy Pelosi
Donald Trump
2020 Election
Chairman Bennie Thompson
Mark Meadows
Jeffrey Clark
data collection
privacy