Here's What the House Oversight Committee Is Digging Into This Week

After last week's hearing on fraud, waste, and abuse surrounding COVID-19 aid funding, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee has another busy week ahead exposing areas where oversight was sorely lacking before and where Democrats failed to pursue accountability.

First up this week is a hearing dealing with Biden's border crisis. On Tuesday, February 7, at 10:00 am ET, the House Oversight Committee will convene for "On The Front Lines of the Border Crisis: A Hearing with Chief Patrol Agents." Notably, the Biden Department of Homeland Security sought to muzzle any of its border agents from testifying before the Oversight Committee led by Chairman James Comer (R-KY). 

But after Comer reminded the Biden administration that he has compulsory power, DHS relented and two border agents will answer questions about how the policies implemented by President Joe Biden and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have affected their ability to secure our country. 

The two agents testifying are Gloria Chavez — the chief Border Patrol agent in the Rio Grande Valley Sector of the U.S. Mexico border — and John Modlin — the chief Border Patrol agent in the Tucson Sector.

"The Biden Administration’s radical open borders policies have ignited the worst border crisis in American history," remarked Chairman Comer ahead of the hearing. "Starting on day one in office, President Biden and his administration rolled back deterrent focused policies, halted the construction of the border wall, gutted interior enforcement, pushed amnesty for illegal immigrants – all of which have made it difficult for U.S. Border Patrol agents to secure the border," he noted. At Tuesday's hearing, Comer promised lawmakers and Americans "will hear firsthand from the Border Patrol about this humanitarian and national security crisis."

Then on Wednesday, February 8, at 10:00 am ET, the Oversight Committee will hear testimony from three former high-ranking Twitter executives in the first part of a series of hearings on "Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias" which will begin by diving into Twitter’s role in suppressing news stories and other expression about Hunter Biden's laptop. 

An outgrowth of the Twitter Files released by Elon Musk and a group of independent journalists, the first hearing diving into the federal government's work with social media companies to circumvent the First Amendment has some names that have come to be even more infamous as new information about Twitter's suppression of expression that Democrats find to be inconvenient. 

Testifying on Wednesday are Twitter's former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde — a leading voice behind the platform's decision to ban Donald Trump — former Deputy General Counsel James Baker — who the Twitter Files showed internally admitted that the Hunter Biden story did not constitute a breach of Twitter's rules but instructed staff to continue suppressing the story anyway — and former Global Head of Trust & Safety Yoel Roth — who oversaw the activist team of Twitter employees who targeted conservatives and Republicans all while slapping each other on the back for each new scalp they claimed in their intolerant campaigns.

Now that Hunter Biden has been revealed by his lawyers to (as we all knew) be the owner of the infamous laptop, there's a whole lot of questions for those who tried to discredit the laptop as some sort of Russian disinformation. Expect the hearing to lean on what's been disclosed in the Twitter Files and for more confirmation of what conservatives already believed to be true: Twitter was run by leftist activists who selectively enforced or ignored policies to the advantage of Democrats. Will any of the former Twitter employees testifying express any remorse? Unlikely. 

Still, "accountability is coming," Chairman Comer said in a statement previewing Wednesday's hearing. "Americans deserve answers about this attack on the First Amendment and why Big Tech and the Swamp colluded to censor this information about the Biden family selling access for profit," he added of the revelations about the "big guy" and other Biden family business deals contained on Hunter's laptop. 

Stay with Townhall for full coverage of both Oversight Committee hearings taking place this week.