{"id":1423021,"date":"2022-04-07T08:00:29","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1423021"},"modified":"2022-04-07T08:00:38","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T12:00:38","slug":"nancy-pelosis-jan-6-committee-is-following-the-same-pattern-as-the-evil-john-doe-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nancy-pelosis-jan-6-committee-is-following-the-same-pattern-as-the-evil-john-doe-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"Nancy Pelosi\u2019s Jan. 6 Committee Is Following The Same Pattern As The Evil John Doe Investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">32<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnancy-pelosis-jan-6-committee-is-following-the-same-pattern-as-the-evil-john-doe-investigation%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1423021&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/32804738288_3c57c512ee_k.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Fifteen months after Congress certified the 2020 election, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s hand-picked Jan. 6 commission is still forging ahead with partisan theater. <\/p>\n<p>The committee has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/02\/05\/us\/politics\/january-6-committee.html\">seized bank records<\/a> of peaceful protesters, <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/12\/16\/j6-committee-fabricates-more-evidence-says-trump-waited-187-minutes-to-call-for-peace-it-was-actually-25\/\">routinely<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/12\/15\/breaking-january-6-committee-admits-it-doctored-text-message-between-meadows-and-jordan\/\">made up evidence<\/a> to tarnish Republican leaders, <a href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2021\/08\/30\/politics\/january-6-phone-records-members-of-congress\/index.html\">spied on federal lawmakers\u2019<\/a> phone records, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/hannity-january-6-text-mark-meadows-liz-cheney\">threatened press freedom<\/a>, and is now admittedly <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.ph\/6GCev\">trying to criminalize<\/a> GOP\u2019s fundraising on the issue of election security, as The Federalist\u2019s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/03\/10\/j6-committee-seeks-to-criminalize-republican-fundraising\/\">reported<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n<p>The unserious committee has been exploiting the Capitol riot for political ends since it happened, but as time passes, Democrats\u2019 abuses of power become more brazen \u2014 and they call to mind some of the most egregious instances of neglect of the rule of law and civil liberties in our country\u2019s recent history.<\/p>\n<p>The yearslong and still ongoing Russia collusion hoax comes to mind. The committee\u2019s conduct has <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/03\/25\/jan-6-committee-claims-its-digital-watergate-is-above-the-law\/\">drawn parallels to Watergate<\/a> as well, most recently with its attempts to subpoena opposition records, which would include financial records from the Salesforce database as well as personal, sensitive information about Republican donors and other party supporters.<\/p>\n<p>As the National Republican Senate Committee wrote in an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/prod-static.gop.com\/media\/documents\/NRSC_Amicus_1648140640.pdf\">amicus brief<\/a>, \u201cWhat the Salesforce subpoena demands is for the company to hand over the \u2018Holy Grail\u2019 of the RNC\u2019s internal digital playbook.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s another comparison \u2014 one that carried massive implications for national politics and the rule of law: Wisconsin\u2019s infamous <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2017\/12\/07\/bombshell-report-political-persecution-scott-walker-swept-high-level-gop-officials\/\">John Doe investigation<\/a> of former Gov. Scott Walker and his supporters.<\/p>\n<h2>The John Doe Investigation<\/h2>\n<p>It all started back in 2010, when Walker was still county executive of Milwaukee and running for governor. Based on a report that public funds had been stolen from an annual military event, Walker opened an investigation, which came to be known as John Doe I.<\/p>\n<p>Wisconsin has a provision for these legal proceedings, called John Doe investigations. Like grand juries, they\u2019re intended to determine whether a crime has been committed and, if so, who committed it. <\/p>\n<p>Unlike grand juries, however, these are not conclusions drawn not by a jury of peers but investigations helmed by a single judge. Not only can law enforcement subpoena witnesses, but they can issue gag orders that prevent those witnesses from saying anything publicly about the investigation, granting an inordinate amount of secrecy to those overseeing it.<\/p>\n<p>Six people were convicted as a result of John Doe I. By this point, Walker had secured the governorship and by 2012 was facing a union-fueled recall effort, which he weathered and won.<\/p>\n<p>After Walker won the recall election, however, a judge gave the overseeing district attorney the green light to grow the scope of the John Doe investigation \u2014 except this time it targeted Walker himself for supposedly breaking campaign finance laws. The DA was John Chisholm, the same DA <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/12\/03\/district-attorneys-sorry-waukesha-excuses-plus-bad-bail-laws-are-a-recipe-for-more-disaster-in-wisconsin\/\">who became infamous<\/a> in November 2021 when a criminal he let off with exceptional leniency murdered six people and injured more than 62 others when he <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/11\/22\/waukesha-citizens-reel-from-christmas-parade-attack-describe-bodies-in-the-street\/\">plowed an SUV<\/a> through an annual Christmas parade. <\/p>\n<p>The overreaches of the investigation were extreme and chilling. Prosecutors targeted not only Walker and conservative organizations in the state but also his supporters. For instance, as Kimberley Strassel documented in her book \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/w\/the-intimidation-game-kimberley-strassel\/1122801273\">The Intimidation Game<\/a>,\u201d a 2013 subpoena going after one target, Ed O\u2019Keefe, who directed the conservative Wisconsin Club for Growth that helped with Walker\u2019s recall election victory, shows the insane breadth of the investigation:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>The subpoena\u2019s sweeping demands included all of O\u2019Keefe\u2019s correspondence going back to April 2009 with dozens of people \u2014 whose own names were listed on its first page. \u2026 Among several visible political figures were also listed lots of small vendors to, and fund-raisers for, the club. The government would have been hard pressed to know the club had such associations. \u2018That\u2019s when I realized they had been spying on us for some time. There was no way they could have had those names otherwise,\u2019 he says. He\u2019d only later find out that prosecutors had already gone to all his Internet service providers and subpoenaed every conversation he\u2019d ever had. They\u2019d done the same to at least seventeen other people.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The subpoena\u2019s demands were shocking. Not only did they expose spying and cover a grand scope \u2014 O\u2019Keefe would later learn that in a single day, prosecutors had subpoenaed 29 different conservative organizations in Wisconsin \u2014 but they also included gag orders that prevented the recipients from telling anyone except their attorney what was in the search warrant or even that they had received it. <\/p>\n<p>The gag order would have been bad enough for people like O\u2019Keefe, but he wasn\u2019t the only one whose communications were summoned. Others had them seized in the form of pre-dawn raids.<\/p>\n<p>One of these raids occurred at the home of political consultant R.J. Johnson \u2014 except Johnson and his wife weren\u2019t home, according to Strassel\u2019s account. The only person home in the still-dark hours of the early morning was their 16-year-old son, who was prevented by a \u201ctroop of armed law enforcement\u201d from calling his parents, his grandparents who lived less than a mile away, or even a lawyer. The son was told that he was also under the gag order and could be hauled off to jail if he told anyone what had happened. <\/p>\n<p>A similar thing happened to Johnson\u2019s business partner Deborah Jordahl when an armed deputy sheriff showed up at her door at 6:00 a.m. with a search warrant. Here\u2019s how Strassel tells it:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Jordahl asked for permission to wake her children on her own so they wouldn\u2019t be scared. Permission denied. The deputy sheriff accompanied her into each room. Jordahl would later find out that her son, upon waking and seeing a police officer, thought for several minutes that his father was dead.<\/p>\n<p>The deputy herded them all into the family room and read the warrant, including the gag order. Jordahl\u2019s fifteen-year-old daughter sat on the sofa, weeping, as the deputy explained that the kids were also subject to consequences if they spoke. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Just like the Johnsons, the Jordahl children were also subject to the gag order, and Deborah Jordahl was prevented from calling her lawyer. As Strassel put it, Jordahl would have had a tough time making a call anyway because \u201cAfter going through every closet and drawer and combing through the basement and the family vehicles, the police department left with her phone, her husband\u2019s phone, both their computers, the kids\u2019 computers, hard drives, iPods, an e-reader, a voice recorder, pocket calendars, and her files.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJordahl later found out that most of this was unnecessary,\u201d Strassel recounted. \u201cIt was simple harassment.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Just Like J6<\/h2>\n<p>The harassment carried consequences, both personal and professional, for the targets. O\u2019Keefe, Johnson, and Jordahl all experienced hits to their business due to the \u201ccloud of suspicion\u201d and the loss of their records and digital assets. Clients stopped answering calls, and potential business opportunities were lost.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven if they hadn\u2019t heard about the Doe\u201d Johnson <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-wisconsin-targets-tell-their-story-1437608811\">told<\/a> the Wall Street Journal, \u201cit would have been unethical for me to bring them in blind. So I had to turn down business on that account.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On top of it all, they carried the weight of the knowledge that they could go to jail.<\/p>\n<p>The investigation also had consequences for the state\u2019s entire conservative movement. As Strassel explained:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>The John Doe got shut down, but not before the left accomplished many of its goals. It harassed and put in suspended animation most of Wisconsin\u2019s conservative movement during a crucial election period. It disclosed donors and pertinent information that could be used to attack and silence the right. It required its victims to spend, collectively, millions of dollars on legal defense \u2014 money diverted from advocacy. It subjected individuals to the terror of personal prosecution, wreaking havoc on their livelihoods, their families, their ability to sleep at night. It made them think twice about taking part in the electoral system. This is what intimidation is all about.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Through similar intimidation tactics, the Jan. 6 committee has the same effect. Following what was the most problematic election in our country\u2019s history \u2014 thanks to Big Tech\u2019s censorship of conservative leaders and information that might harm Democrats in the run-up to the election, states breaking or changing voting laws last-minute to accommodate mass mail-in voting, the press propagandizing 24\/7 for Democrats and against Republicans, and Mark Zuckerberg dumping massive funds into left-wing groups to take over government elections offices \u2014 the J6 committee is squashing election-security efforts by threatening those who question that 2020 was 100 percent free and fair.<\/p>\n<p>As Hemingway <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/03\/10\/j6-committee-seeks-to-criminalize-republican-fundraising\/\">outlined<\/a>, Democrats are presently trying to criminalize Republican fundraising \u2014 which, by the way, utilizes the exact same methods Democrats use \u2014 by claiming that when the GOP does it, it\u2019s wire fraud. When political donations can play such an outsized role in election outcomes, Pelosi\u2019s underhanded tricks seek to have the same effect as the John Doe circus: to hamstring political enemies by cutting off their donors and creating a cloud of suspicion over perfectly legal and ethical activities.<\/p>\n<p>The RNC has filed a lawsuit against Pelosi\u2019s committee for its sprawling subpoena that demands highly sensitive information about Republican supporters, and the details bear a frightening resemblance to the John Doe intimidation. <\/p>\n<p>As The Federalist\u2019s Tristan Justice <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/03\/25\/jan-6-committee-claims-its-digital-watergate-is-above-the-law\/\">reported<\/a>: \u201cWhile the Jan. 6 Committee claimed in its <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.dcd.241102\/gov.uscourts.dcd.241102.17.0.pdf\">opposition memo<\/a> the subpoena is \u2018narrowly tailored,\u2019 its compliance would require the Republican Party to reveal its digital strategy and identification of its supporters to ideological state actors running the partisan probe with an explicit vengeance. The committee has already\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/interactive\/2022\/texting-insurrection\/\">selectively leaked<\/a>\u00a0private communications obtained through its subpoenas to smear dissidents to friendly media while\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/12\/15\/breaking-january-6-committee-admits-it-doctored-text-message-between-meadows-and-jordan\/\">manipulating<\/a>\u00a0other texts to promote a political narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Worse than what happened in John Doe, when 29 conservative organizations were subpoenaed on the same day as noted above, the Jan. 6 committee has <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/01\/20\/only-10-percent-of-j6-committee-subpoenas-relate-to-the-capitol-riot\/\">officially subpoenaed<\/a> a whopping 99 people or entities and requested the voluntary compliance of others, according to a Federalist analysis. Of the subpoenas, only about 8 percent were related to the Capitol riot.<\/p>\n<p>The Jan. 6 committee has also investigated and harassed Americans who attended Donald Trump\u2019s rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, even those who engaged only in constitutionally protected peaceful protest. It went so low as to weaponize the private sector and personal bank records when it asked Bank of America, which had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-9228367\/BoA-snooped-hundreds-accounts-looking-Capitol-rioters.html\">snooped<\/a> through countless accounts of innocent Americans, to hand over a list of people who made transactions in D.C. on Jan. 5 and 6 or stayed in an Airbnb. It\u2019s all about punishing political enemies and intimidating opponents. <\/p>\n<p>That brings us back to Wisconsin\u2019s John Doe investigation. \u201cI\u2019ve been in or around politics for two decades and I would have thought this happens in other countries but not the U.S., and not in Wisconsin,\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-wisconsin-targets-tell-their-story-1437608811\">said<\/a> Kurt Bauer, president of the group Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, which was hit so hard with subpoenas during John Doe that it reportedly brought on a forensics team to copy the boatload of requested information from computers. \u201cIn this country, we don\u2019t leverage the justice system to punish our political opponents.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Correction: In this country, we <em>shouldn\u2019t<\/em> leverage political power to ruin the lives of opponents \u2014 and decent people don\u2019t. But that\u2019s exactly what Pelosi\u2019s partisan committee is working overtime to do. <\/p>\n<p>John Doe, which turned the lives of innocents upside down, has gone down in recent history as a nakedly partisan and embarrassing abuse of power without accountability \u2014 but that was just one state. The Jan. 6 committee is John Doe for all of America, and those responsible for its sins be brought to account.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts\/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kyleezempel\">@kyleezempel<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifteen months after Congress certified the 2020 election, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s hand-picked Jan. 6 commission is still forging ahead with partisan theater. The committee has seized bank records<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":514,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1423021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/514"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1423021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1423021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1423021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1423021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}