House Republicans prepare to wield new power to investigate Biden – live

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Even as it gears up to hold the Biden administration to account, House Republicans yesterday acted to defang the independent body that could have investigated its lawmakers, Hugo Lowell reports:

House Republicans moved to pre-emptively kill any investigations against its members as it curtailed the power of an independent ethics office just as it was weighing whether to open inquiries into lawmakers who defied subpoenas issued by the House January 6 select committee last year.

The incoming Republican majority also paved the way for a new special subcommittee with a wide mandate to investigate the US justice department and intelligence agencies, which could include reviewing the criminal investigations into Donald Trump and a Republican congressman caught up in the Capitol attack inquiry.

The measures took effect as House Republicans narrowly passed the new rules package that included the changes for the next Congress, 220-213, setting the stage for politically charged fights with the Biden administration over access to classified materials and details of criminal investigations.

Here’s something you can expect to hear much about from Republicans today. Classified papers were found at an office used by Joe Biden before he became president, a discovery that the GOP has compared to the government secrets found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, which caused the FBI to search the property. But as the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, there are major differences between the two cases – not least being that Biden’s office quickly turned the documents over to the government:

The US justice department is investigating a number of documents bearing highly sensitive classified markings stored at Joe Biden’s former institute in Washington DC from his time as vice-president in the Obama administration, the White House acknowledged in a statement on Monday.

The documents were found by Biden’s personal lawyers at the start of November when they closed out office space at the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center for Diplomacy, a thinktank where he was an honorary professor until 2019.

Biden’s personal lawyers sent the documents to the National Archives, which referred the matter to the justice department because of their sensitive nature, with some classified at the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level, a source familiar with the matter said.

Merrick Garland, the attorney general, has since assigned the Trump-appointed US attorney in Chicago John Lausch to oversee the investigation alongside the FBI, a second person said. A spokesperson for the justice department declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.

For the Republicans, investigating Joe Biden is about keeping their promises. The party told their voters they’d hold his administration to account, and intend to use the House’s investigative abilities – which include subpoena power – to do so.

Such inquiries are one of Congress’s core functions, and also one of the things the Republicans can do alone, since any legislation they muscle through with their slim majority in the House can be ignored by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The House is scheduled to take up legislative business today from 12pm eastern time, and by the afternoon will vote to set up two committees.

The first will be the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. This is the more anodyne of the two, since many Democrats also have concerns about China’s policies towards the United States and its allies.

The second order of business will be creating the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which Republican leadership has said will investigate how federal law enforcement, including the FBI and justice and homeland security departments, “obtain information from and provide information to the private sector, non-profit entities, or other government agencies to facilitate action against American citizens.” The subcommittee will reportedly be chaired by Jim Jordan, a well-known conservative and ally of Donald Trump.

Republican leadership summed up the subcommittee like this: “House Republicans will hold the Biden Administration accountable.” Needless to say, Democrats are not expected to vote for this one, but five members of the party could serve on it.

Republicans gear up to use House's powers of investigation against Biden

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Even before he won the White House, Republicans were accusing Joe Biden of committing all kinds of nefarious deeds, and the accusations have only increased since he took office. Today, they’ll finally get the chance to make good on threats to hold him to account, when the GOP-controlled House of Representatives votes to lay the groundwork for the first of what are expected to be several investigations into his policies. With the Senate still under the control of Democrats, who are unlikely to entertain anything but the most crucial of legislation coming from the House, expect these inquiries to be a major focus of Republican lawmakers over the coming months, if not years.

Here’s what else is going on today:

• Biden continues his trip in Mexico, where he’s scheduled to speak alongside its president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau at 4.45pm eastern time.

• The House Republican leadership will give a press conference at 10am eastern time.

• The supreme court will hear Glacier Northwest v International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a case in which conservative justices could roll back protections for unions.