Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (HI) slammed the “culture of fear and self-censorship” that government agencies have allegedly fostered internally and in society at large in the opening hearing for the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
Gabbard, who was a Democrat while serving in Congress but left the party last year, testified along with Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) as the new House committee launches its investigation into the federal agencies’ alleged targeting of conservatives.
EX-FBI AGENTS DETAIL ‘POLITICIZATION’ OF AGENCY AHEAD OF BOMBSHELL GOP HEARING
“This culture of fear and self-censorship is not unfounded,” she said at the Thursday hearing, referencing the interactions between Twitter and federal agencies over the Hunter Biden laptop story and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “We have individuals in our government, often working through their arms in the mainstream media and Big Tech doing exactly what our founders rejected: trying to control what we, the people, are allowed to see and say, under the guise of protecting us, from so-called misinformation or disinformation.”
Gabbard continued, “We have to stop this insanity and protect the sacred freedoms and vanquish the fear and self-censorship that is now pervasive. … But as we sit here today, the danger is that if we choose to reject or challenge whatever those in power declare is the so-called truth, we are accused of being anti-authority. We are accused of being a danger to society, accused of spreading misinformation, and are then targeted, smeared, and called things like a Russian asset, white supremacist, bigoted, racist, sexist, extremist, traitor, and so on.”
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She spoke of her personal experience of being scrutinized by fellow lawmakers for questioning U.S. motives in Ukraine, particularly when Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) called her statements treasonous.
The hearing sets the stage for the next two years of the Republican majority’s investigations into the politics of federal agencies, including the DOJ. The second panel featured the testimony of two former FBI agents who said liberal politics infiltrated the agency.
