McCarthy can restore House’s integrity with a little-known committee.
Restoring Institutional Integrity in the House
One of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s primary goals, having regained leadership of the House, must be to reinstate the institutional integrity that was honored only in the breach over and over again by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Under Pelosi’s leadership, long-standing fundamental House rules and protocols were repeatedly violated for the single purpose of pursuing a partisan political agenda at the expense of historically honored principles. The formation of the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol and its indisputable perversion of important House rules highlight the issue. The rules that were violated allowed the committee to abuse the subpoena process and deny subpoenaed witnesses basic protections the rules were intended to provide. This must be corrected immediately.
There is one mechanism readily available to the speaker to restore order and respect for the rules. It is called the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (“BLAG”).
The BLAG was created in 1993 by a Democrat-controlled House, over the objection of a majority of Republicans in the House. It is a body comprised of five members of the House leadership, three majority party members and two minority party members, that speaks for the House in directing litigation in which the BLAG perceives the House to have a direct interest.
Republicans who opposed the formation of BLAG argued that the entire House should vote before a legal position that purports to speak for the House is adopted. The Democrats prevailed, and now by House rule, once BLAG members vote to direct the House general counsel to participate in litigation and take a position, even if the vote is 3-2, its position speaks for the entire House.
The J6 Committee’s Actions Highlight Partisan Abuse of the Rules
McCarthy characterized the degree to which the Jan. 6 Committee flagrantly violated long-entrenched House protocol and rules to support its partisan political agenda as “unprecedented” and “an egregious abuse of power.” However, when the rules violations have been challenged, courts have concluded that they were bound by the House’s own interpretation and application of its rules and had to yield to the BLAG as the official advocacy voice of the House. Since BLAG endorsed the Jan. 6 Committee’s actions by a 3-2 vote, their rules violations were permitted with impunity, notwithstanding the express language of the House rules.
McCarthy must now convene the BLAG, as he has the full authority to do, to reverse its partisan political perversion by Pelosi and company, and to return the House to a body that at least honors its own rules, without regard to a politically expedient agenda of the day.
Why We Should Care
The following examples of the Jan. 6 Committee’s abuse of House protocol and rules demonstrate why we should care and why McCarthy must act now.
- The House resolution creating the Jan. 6 Committee called for it to be comprised of 13 members, five of whom were to be selected in consultation with then-House Minority Leader McCarthy. Despite McCarthy’s public protestations, Pelosi summarily rejected McCarthy’s selections for the committee. McCarthy then refused to participate in a process that violated the rules, and the committee went forward with nine members instead of the 13 provided for in the resolution creating it. Pelosi’s partisan political selections for the committee undermined its integrity.
- The committee abused its authority regarding witnesses called to testify, in violation of the resolution establishing it and House rules and regulations. These important rules require consultation between a committee’s chair and its ranking minority member before a witness can
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