A former Republican counsel to the House Intelligence Committee thinks it's "nuts" that House Speaker Mike Johnson named hard-right GOP Reps. Scott Perry and Ronny Jackson — both of whom tried to help overturn the 2020 presidential election — to the chamber's powerful intelligence committee.
Perry, of Pennsylvania, was "central to the plan of Jan. 6," former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified in front of Congress. But Hutchinson's testimony apparently didn't dissuade Johnson from naming Perry to the intelligence committee Wednesday.
Jackson, of Texas, meanwhile, is a self-described "ultra-MAGA" Republican who has spread various conspiracy theories and was demoted by the Pentagon after his retirement from the military. Moreover, the House Ethics Committee said last month it was investigating Jackson and fellow Texas Republican Rep. Wesley Hunt. The committee included no details of allegations against the duo, and it wasn't immediately clear whether their cases were related. The panel has until June 24 to release more information on the probes.
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Selections to the committee in the past have included lawmakers with backgrounds in national security, and who have earned respect from both parties.
As such, the appointments drew the rebuke of Ira Goldman, who served as a former Republican congressional aide and worked as a counsel to the intelligence committee in the 1970s and 1980s.
"What Speaker Johnson has done is flat out irresponsible," Goldman wrote on X, formerly Twitter, Wednesday afternoon. "For the country. And for the House. In short, it's nuts."
“You’re giving members seats on the committee when, based on the public record, they couldn’t get a security clearance if they came through any other door," Goldman said, according to The Associated Press.
Presidents receive the highest level of intel briefings, Goldman said, "because, of course, that goes with the job to which the voters elected them."
"But Scott Perry & Ronny Jackson's elections to the House didn't elect them to receive those briefings as members of HPSCI," he noted. "No, that's entirely in the Speaker's discretion. Indeed it is so much in the Speaker's discretion that not only may he on his own name members to HPSCI, the rules grant him the sole discretion to remove members from HPSCI."
"This is [poop emoji] with which Speakers should not play games. Yet, how else to explain what Johnson has now done?"
Having Jackson and Perry on the committee could damage the trust between the president and the committee in handling classified information, Goldman told the AP.
In a separate tweet, he added: "It's hard for me to express how really pissed (and, as an institutional guy, disappointed) I am about this."
