After the GOP move to boycott the Jan. 6 panel was widely seen as a tactical error, Democrats have vowed to seat members on all new select committees.
Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool Photo via AP
The Democratic Party vowed on Tuesday not to make the same mistake the Republican Party did when it boycotted the panel investigating the Capitol riot.
"It is our intent to seat members on … every select committee, every subcommittee that the leadership on the majority side advances," Rep. Pete Aguilar, House Democratic Caucus chair, said, according to The Hill.
Republicans won a slim majority in the House during last year's midterms, giving the party control over establishing committees.
One of the subcommittees that Democrats intend to sit on is the controversial Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which was established on Tuesday.
The panel will be led by Rep. Jim Jordan, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, and will have sweeping powers to investigate agencies of the federal government for supposed bias against conservatives.
The subcommittee will scrutinize how agencies collect, analyze, and use information about US citizens, its forming resolution said.
The White House referred to it as a partisan political stunt "driven by the most extreme MAGA members of their caucus," NBC News reported.
Speaking to reporters, the House Democratic Caucus chair said it is in the "best interest" of the party and the public to seat Democrats on such panels, so that "Republicans don't have an opportunity behind closed doors to shape, and to add to, these conspiracy theories."
Democrats also intend to sit on a new select committee focusing on competition between the US and China, which was overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday.
The move to seat House Democrats is a departure from the previous GOP strategy, which saw Republican leaders boycott the select committee to investigate the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
After seeing his partisan picks to sit on the panel vetoed by Democrats in 2021, then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy opted not to appoint any Republican members, though two Republicans, then-Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, ultimately joined.
Trump described McCarthy's decision to not have GOP representation on the committee as "very, very foolish" when speaking to conservative radio host Wayne Allen Root last June.
That same month, Republican allies in Congress told The New York Times that McCarthy's decision left the GOP without an insight into the inner workings of the panel.
Political experts told Insider last year that McCarthy's decision not to participate was a "huge tactical mistake" that prevented the GOP from being able to control the narrative around the investigation.
