Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) is planning to scrap the Subcommittee on Terrorism — and replace it with a committee devoted to investigating President Donald Trump. This is because he believes Trump “is a bigger threat than terrorism,” according to a report from The New Yorker.
Engel (pictured above right), 71, took over the Foreign Affairs Committee last week after Democrats officially reclaimed the House majority.
The House created the Subcommittee on Terrorism after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
But now that Democrats have regained House control, they apparently no longer feel a terrorism subcommittee is necessary; they believe Trump and his administration are more dangerous than terror suspects who may threaten the U.S.
“It is telling that this is the subcommittee that Engel will now eliminate in favor of his new investigative panel,” The New Yorker’s Susan B. Glasser noted.
“There ‘wasn’t a great clamor’ to keep the terrorism panel, Engel told me, whereas there is no end to the Trump foreign-policy scandals that his members are pushing to investigate.”
Engel also told Glasser, “We just thought, if we’re going to do something relevant in this era where Congress is going to reassert itself, where there are so many questionable activities of this administration vis-à-vis foreign policy, that it made sense to have this.”
Glasser’s interpretation of Engel’s comments suggests that “Trump, in other words, is a bigger threat than terrorism. At least for now.”
Engel plans to investigate a wide array of topics — from Trump’s controversial meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, to Trump’s business relationships in Russia and the Middle East and his relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and other leaders.
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Engel also said in a statement following his election to chairman in January that his committee “will push the administration for answers about the way it has crafted policy dealing with some of the world’s most important hotspots, from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, to Venezuela, to Syria, to Russia, to North Korea.”
As Glasser noted, such investigations would represent “a big departure for a committee that typically examines policies, not people.”
But House Democrats have been eagerly plotting nearly every conceivable investigation they can open into Trump, his administration and his policies.
The new chairs of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House Committee on the Judiciary, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the House Financial Services Committee are Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), respectively.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) has also told NBC News she “will use every area of the law to investigate” Trump “and his business transactions and that of his family” — in the hope of unearthing illegal activities that could lead to impeachment.
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