join the conversation with your text messages, facebook comments, and tweets. host: this week we have been taking a closer look at key parts of the republicans commitment to america, what they unveiled before the 2022 election, including plans for government accountability and oversight. here to talk about that with us this morning is jeff mordock white house reporter with the , washington times. jeff, there are several parts of this. the weaponization of government, which house republicans created a committee to look into that. you also have the biden fami business as part of these investigations. family business as part of these investations. therigins of the covid pandemic. china competitiveness. in the withdrawal from afghanistan. along with border enforcement and the treatment of the january 6 defendants. it is a lot. guest: it is a lot and it is a lot they want to accomplish through the seven investigations. the republicans have been preparing for this since long before midterms when it seemed clear they would retake the house they started sending preservation letters to different officials, to attorney general garland, asking them to preserve documents and hold onto documents because subpoenas will be coming and they will have to turn the stuff over to their committees. host: will we see hearings on these topics? guest: absolutely we will. republicans are gearing up. it looks like the first set we will see is on border security. after that we will start seeing hearings on the botched withdrawal of afghanistan. host: how do you think democrats are prepared to handle these hearings? guest: democrats are preparing for the hearing by labeling them as partisan witchhunts. what they will make the argument for is this is an attempt to embarrass the biden administration without delivering anything for the american people. they will argue this is part of the republican ideology and not address any of the court issues facing america right now like inflation, like rising gas prices, like supply chain. host: we want to get our viewers to call in and react. tell us your thoughts about this part of the house republican agenda. oversight and accountability. democrats (202) 748-8000, republicans (202) 748-8001, independents (202) 748-8002. text is as well at (202) 748-8003. let's take the first one. the weaponization of government. we will oversee this and who will lead it? guest: jim jordan will lead this committee. they have not put anyone on this committee yet. it's vision is vague. what they have said is they will go after the politicization of government. it will include whether the biden administration weaponized the justice department to target political rivals. it will look at the treatment of former president trump when the fbi raided mar-a-lago. it will look at the government in terms of the hunter biden laptop. did they suppress any evidence? did big tech suppress any of that evidence. they will look at federal government employees have worked to suppress free speech. we do not know who is on the committee. democrats have already slammed to this committee and compared it to the 1950's mccarthy hearings. they think it is a way for republicans to carry out vendettas against people they don't like. that is how they have been pitching this committee. i think this will be the most interesting committee to watch. subcommittee to watch. it will be a subcommittee. it is still very nebulous right now. we will see where this goes. host: what it also include the muller investigation? guest: yes. that will probably be later. what the republicans are waiting on is the special counsel to finish his report and get it to the justice department. they do not want to interfere with anything john durham is doing. there are some he's running around. john durham is the special counsel appointed by former attorney general william barr to investigate the investigators and look into how the fbi, justice department, and intelligence agencies operated in hand like initial changes of the trump-russia investigation. host: how long has that work been going on? guest: that has been going on since may 2019. he has brought several cases into court. one was a guilty plea to a former fbi lawyer. he admitted to doctoring evidence. he got a slap on the risk. the other cases as a former clinton campaign attorney. the other is a russian analyst who was providing information. they were both acquitted by jury in what were embarrassing defeats for john durham. host: do we know how much the investigation costs american taxpayers? guest: we have a slight view. before he was special counsel he was working as an independent investigator at the justice department. we do not have his cost from that period. we do not have a complete picture of how much has been spent on that probe. host: let's talk about the biden family businesses. this you are in florida says all i want to know is what started the search, is a fact the republicans were going to look for papers of hunter? guest: is she talking about the document search? host: let's say yes. guest: what started the november 7 document search, the documents were found at the university of pennsylvania office in d.c. -- host: i'm sorry. i think they're talking about going to look for papers of hunter? we can take both. guest: to prime minister with the laptop? are they asking what sparked the republicans? host: i think so. guest: what sparked that is we still have a lot of outstanding questions about this laptop. we have a lot of questions about hunter biden's business dealers, influence peddling, there are still a lot of questions. how republicans will pitch this is they will use the same tactics democrats did when they went after trump's taxes. they pitch this, it is not about trump, it is about the irs and how the irs is auditing public officials and other government officials. what the republicans are going to try to do is make a similar argument and say this is not about hunter biden, this is about the -- this is not about the biden family business dealings, this is about the tools of federal agencies to flag money laundering and overseas deals that might be shady. that is how they will try to pitch this. if they happen to hundred -- to uncover stuff hunter biden or his dad they are may not have done they will try to pitch this as a way of bolstering law enforcement's ability to flag business deals that might be suspect. host: the lines are lighting up. theodore in miami. republican. what is your question or comment about these investigations. caller: good morning. the oversight and accountability, is it meant just for internal oversight and accountability in the house gop and the house or is it oversight and accountability meant for the american people? guest: that is a good question. that is how the republicans will pitch this, that this is accountability for the american people. as i just mentioned with the biden business dealings probe. they will look at that as a law enforcement issue, a money laundering issue, increasing the ability -- increasing the powers of federal law enforcement. if you look at the burgeoning documents probe with the classified documents, they will look at that as a national security matter. if you look at the origins of covid investigation they will look at that as a way to review research and function research which is specialized research involving viruses. some said that lead to a leak at a chinese lab that started the covid pandemic. they will look at that as keeping americans safe from future viruses. that is how the republicans will pitch this, as a way to protect the american people and provide oversight. host: bob in rhode island. what is an example of policy that could come from these hearings. are these more of a political strategy for 2024 or what are republicans hoping to achieve with these hearings? he says that is still unclear. guest: it is still unclear. what it seems republicans are trying to achieve is to come up with damaging information on the biden administration. that seems to be the goal. democrats have derided the investigations as fishing expeditions. without more clear there is a point to their claims -- without them being more clear. there are two that will be worrisome for the biden administration. one is the botched afghanistan withdraw, hearings and oversight of the afghanistan withdraw. there are still a lot of questions that remain about that and it is going to reveal some decision-making that was not well thought out, including why this administration did not believe kabul would fall once the taliban came back into power, why they thought the taliban would not take over kabul. the other thing is the documents case. that will be a national security issue. even if nobody committed a crime committed as possible nobody did commit a crime, it still goes back to national security. you do not want national -- sitting in a closet in a d.c. office building where anybody could have gone in. it is easy for chinese intelligence to place a spy with the pleading crew or maintenance crew and get access to those documents. that is something else. those are the two most worrisome investigations for the biden administration. host: president biden in california yesterday to view the storm damage and he spoke about those classified documents found at an office in his home. they date back to his time as vice president. here is what he had to say. [video clip] >> we found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place and immediately turned them over to the archives and justice department. we are fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly. you will find there is nothing there. i have no regrets in following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do. host: that was president biden in california. what do think about the president saying he has no regrets about how this was handled? guest: it is hard to believe he has no regrets on how this has been handled. this is been a pr disaster for the biden administration. from the white house press secretary insisting they had found all of the documents, and then other documents turn up. the fact they have not been able to answer why they sat on this for two months and then insisted they had the documents and then they discovered other documents. the pr messaging has been terrible. it has undermined -- he was on a winning streak, and it has completely undermined his momentum. the administration's really needs to be fixed. i have seen some people to call for the president to go on national tv and deliver a primetime address addressing this issue. when you've had presidents and they have been involved in trauma, going back to kennedy in the bay of pigs through reagan in iran-contra and bill clinton and monica lewinsky, they have gone on national tv and issued a mea culpa. biden still has not addressed the special counsel. this white house press secretary is overmatched. she has been sparring with reporters for two meeting -- for two weeks. she has gotten visibly flustered and combative. they want the white house counsel spokesperson. he had a press briefing with us where he revealed no new information and stonewall us. on a personal level i will have been frustrated because i will ask the white house a question and they refer be to the counsel's office, the counsel's office refers bit of the justice department, the justice department refers me to the white house and it is a circle that creates an information blackout. host: we have been covering these press briefings. the press secretary will hold another one this afternoon. you can go to c-span.org for more details about that. she is peppered with questions about these classified documents and her answer, jeff mordock -- guest: i will refer you to the justice department. host: mack in indiana, democratic caller. your question about oversight and accountability. caller: this is the thing i'm concerned about. it is going back to the mccarthy days. they say they have a lot of information and things they have found. look at what happened at the mccarthy hearings, they did not have anything. they want to make sure they have got something and ask what have you got and let us know what the heck is going on. they are chewing a lot of stuff that has been chewed in chewed. the thing i do not like is first they found something with trump, then all of a sudden they find something with biden as far as the documents. i don't like the way -- it is a lot of money and they will keep rehashing stuff, and they're the ones talking about the money being spent, and here they go with a lot of committees. if they are worthwhile committees and they bring stuff that is true, that is good. as long as it is good stuff. a lot of it to be is just a bunch of crab. host: jeff mordock? guest: there are a lot of things we do not know that we will learn through the committees. the decision making in the chain of command in the afghanistan withdraw. that is something we need to know. with the documents, even if nobody committed a crime it is still a massive national security risk and there still a lot of questions the white house needs to answer. as i said earlier, the documents were discovered november 2. they were not made public until cbs news broke the story on january 9, in the white house was forced to come clean. when they came clean they acknowledge the documents at the biden penn center but never acknowledge the documents at the president delaware residents. why was it that brought up? we get into the origins of covid. we are still not sure what we know about that, if we can trust what china has said about that. there is a lot outstanding. i think we will learn a lot from these investigations. i do not think it is there entirely. i think there is partisanship. i do not think it is entirely partisanship. host: here is the headline in the washington post. "presidential records are clear but oversight is not." what can you tell us? guest: in terms of retaining presidential records, after administration is over the records need to be turned over to the national archives, the national archives then goes through the process of determining if they must remain classified or how long they must remain pacified or de-classifying them and making them available for public consumption. the oversight, there is no tracking of the classified documents. in both the trump case and the biden situation, the national archives did not know these documents were missing and that is concerning. they are supposed to have possession of these documents. there does not seem to be a lot of oversight of the national archives. this week the national archives told the house oversight committee that they do not want to cooperate unless the justice department clears it, and they will only share information greenlighted by the justice department, which is another way of stonewalling that investigation. host: angelique in vermont wants to know will the afghanistan withdraw investigation include the timeline negotiated by the trump administration? guest: that remains to be seen. i think that would be a very good thing to look into. i imagine on a republican-led committee that is probably going to be overlooked. you can make the same argument with his document investigation that we have an oversight committee into why president biden had these documents but we did not have an oversight committee looking into why former president trump had his documents. host: democrats will serve on these committees. can we assume they will bring that up? guest: they will bring it up but because they are the minority they do not have the subpoena power, the investigation power. they can bring it up. minority parties are entitled to a witness. they can bring a witness to address the issues but they will not have the power republicans will have because they've lost their investigation abilities. host: kerry in bellflower, california. republican. welcome to the conversation. caller: good morning. my problem is this thing with the fbi allowing white house lawyers to disseminate what documents are going to the department of justice. i have a real problem with that. that is where we need oversight. how on earth does the fbi play hands off in this? guest: that is a great question and something will be explored as the oversight committee continues its document investigation. biden's lawyers, when they had discovered the documents, reached out to the justice department and wanted to know if the fbi wanted to oversee the search at biden's residence. they searched his rehobeth beach beach house as well as his residence. the justice department decided not to use the fbi and let buyers lawyers carry out the search themselves. the reason the justice department said they did that is they thought -- at that times biden's lawyers were deemed to be cooperating by the justice department, so you have his own justice department deciding his own lawyers are cooperating. they also thought they may need the fbi at a later time and they wanted to hold off. at that point to the u.s. attorney in illinois was running an investigation into the matter before we went to special counsel. there was a u.s. attorney looking into the matter and they did not want to interfere with his investigation. that has received a lot of criticism from the republicans who look at it as a double standard when you see the heavy-handed approach they took to president trump. at the same time former president trump had also been subpoenaed for these documents and had not handed them over. there is a slight difference. i also see the republicans when they point to the double standard. host: james in michigan. independent. caller: hello. i am pretty interested in the twitter files investigation. where are the files? it is all just screenshots from journalist. a file is something you can look through. this is not real journalism. the mainstream has not covered it. i think we need to look into it but do not expect a full view from the gop. that is a problem on both sides. it is the deep state. chuck schumer said it. the cia or intelligence community -- six ways from sunday. i find that a compelling narrative, look into the intelligence. this china thing is a bunch of bull. guest: two issues. the twitter files and we've not talked about china competitiveness. the weaponization of the house subcommittee and the judiciary, that will look into this. that will take a look at the files. twitter is a private company, they do not want to handle them over and if congress wants it they will have to issue a subpoena. on the china committee, that will be interesting, and that is a committee set up by the republicans, and it is going to be looking into china competition. our national security position towards taiwan, if that needs to be tweaked. shoring up the u.s. supply chain , which got devastated because of covid. china -- there has been a lot of cases with chinese intellectual property theft of u.s. companies. it is going to look into that. of all of these committees and all of these investigations, this will be the most bipartisan. there is democrat interest, but at the same time some democrats worry it will increase asian xenophobia or scapegoat the asian community. they are pressing republicans to go forward with it but walk a tight line. host: republicans passed legislation addressing competitiveness with china and it did pass with bipartisan support. guest: both parties realize china is a threat to the united states. that is one of the few issues both sides agree on. host: the makeup of the weaponization of the federal government -- investigates executive branches authority to investigate individuals including criminal probes. it will investigate private companies. there will be 15 lawmakers on this committee. nine republicans, six democrats. it includes the judiciary committee and ranking member. jim jordan will be on this committee along with the ranking democrat of the judiciary committee, jerry nadler of new york. dan in woodbridge, virginia. democratic caller. caller: good morning. how are you? this is one of the reasons i dislike the republicans. they ran on how they are going to change everything, they are going to do everything, but you come up with all of these committees that are not pertaining to what you ran on as far as helping the american people now. deal with inflation now. some of these committees, who cared what happened with afghanistan. that has nothing to do with the situation we are in. the republicans acted like they were so against donald trump. why not have a committee against the man who wanted to change the constitution of the united states of america? i just don't get these republicans and their mentality. it makes no sense. host: jeff mordock? guest: i think the republicans will argue they can do both, they can have these committees and they can pass legislation to help the american people. the democrats will side with the collar and asked what does this mean for inflation? republicans will come back like we just talked about with the chinese committee, the competition with china committee , and say we are shoring up the supply chain which was a key contributor to inflation. the afghanistan committee, we are shoring up national security, which is an issue with chinese spies, with ukraine, with taiwan. that would be the argument republicans will make. host: in philadelphia, conrad, a republican. it is your turn. caller: i want to make a few comments. i hear them say donald trump and abided had documents classified in their homes. i think they should go back to the archives. there is no way in the world people can for top-secret documents and people can take them home over three or four years. i think we need to change the system. they are sending you subpoena letters -- it is not the democrats fault -- it is the democrats fault in the republicans fault. there is no way you can sign for them documents do not know where they came from. they need to get a normal citizens to put in the archives. you take a harry potter book and you do not take it to the library the next thing you know you have a $12,000 fine. all of them need to be fired. democrats and republicans. guest: the caller actually makes a good point about the classified documents in the national archives. classified documents do not have any markings. i have seen, especially after what we have learned with president biden, classified documents do not have any barcodes or anything to stand, there is nothing to track that. there is a person in charge of that but there is no electronic system to track where they are or where they are moving to. that is a problem. that is why the national archives does not know what is missing which is a big concern for the american people. there are probably national security files all over this town that people are unaware they have. host: sandra in tennessee. independent. caller: good morning, i am very grateful for c-span. my concern is a chief of staff, vice president, president, anybody on the cabinet, they do not do the filing, they do not put papers away. it is the staff were secretary. i worked in places where i worked for an attorney and went through the files. there were checks from five years ago, whoever did the filing, and found all kinds of things that were misfiled. it is the cleaning people. they leave papers, they do not know what to do, they put them in the box to put them in the closet. you cannot blame it on the particular person, the people who are in charge when there are any types of meetings or classified information. somebody cleans up the desk and i do not blame it on the individual or the resident and the people do not follow through. host: let's take those points. guest: that is a good point. even if it is just people that through documents in a box and ship them out, it is still the mishandling of classified information, which is a crime. it is still a national security risk, even if it is as simple as a low-level staffer through a bunch of stuff in a box. it is still a crime. host: if president biden was not involved, there is no communication of president biden saying i want those documents in that box to take to my office. if the republicans investigate and do not find the president was aware or had anything to say about it, then watched? verse -- then what? versus will they find evidence that with president trump there was communication with him saying i want these things at mar-a-lago. there was one reference to him saying they were memorabilia. guest: keepsakes, he called them. it depends on the facts. it is hard to pin that together without a lot of the facts. if it is found that the president or former president trump directed anybody that is a crime they will be held accountable for. if it is the mistake of the staff throwing stuff in a box, that it gets more confusing. it gets more vague about what can and cannot be done in terms of law enforcement position. host: jason in san diego. democratic caller. caller: good morning. my question or comment is about the afghan pullout. when trump released 5000 of the al qaeda and isis right before he left office, he made a plan and an agreement with them and even tried to meet with these guys in camp david. that is definitely not a good idea. i want to know if the committee is going to investigate from the beginning, the entire plan trump had in releasing those people right when biden was in office. if you do not do that that will make the whole thing irrelevant. you have to start from the beginning of trump's plan when he released isis and al qaeda, 5000 of them. that is what you will have to address. guest: to the callers point, the republicans have been clear this will be a narrow investigation starting with abided administration's decision to pull out of afghanistan and the decisions going from there. as we said earlier i imagine the democrats will raise that point. they will bring witnesses to support that point. without control of the committee, that is only going to go so far. host: we have lots of calls with people concerned about the border. the border enforcement, security, you mentioned those be the first we will see. what will they be investigating? guest: they will be investigating a lot of things. this is a key target for republicans. some republicans have keyed up articles of impeachment for secretary may or just. i think the last time congress moved to impeach a cabinet member was the 1870's. that is how long it has been. this is a key area. they will look into immigration policy, how it can be tightened, and who is coming over. we caught people and terrorists watch lists sneaking into the united states. fentanyl is coming across the border on record levels. people have not been tested for covid coming over. a lot of chaos at the border plus the sheer numbers have been increased. all of that is fair game. host: mark in new jersey. republican. caller: how are you doing. i am originally from boston and is a pretty liberal crowd. i live in south jersey and its wings a bit more red. it is a nice change of culture. it is kind of a bipartisan issue. as far as i'm talking about the biden archives. kamala harris -- host: let's move on to new jersey. apologies to those who have heard what that caller said. caller: that was disgusting what that last callers said. i am really offended by that. what this looks like to me and a lot of voters, and we do not operate in a vacuum. you cannot compare what happened with the trump documents and joe biden. these things happen in context. there is a trial that just finished in new york where the trump organization was deemed criminal. there are the documents. there is the insurrection on january 6. there is his dealings with the president of ukraine, the black male. we have rendered -- the black mail. the public has rendered judgment on trump. he was a criminal president. now the republicans seem to be trying to blacken joe biden's reputation and make the public think both sides are equally corrupt and therefore we should not be voting on the basis of who is more corrupt. this is ridiculous. for them to act as if trump, to act as if joe biden has committed crimes, they are trying to plant the seed in the mind of the voters. that in itself is corrupt. guest: to the caller's point, there is still a lot we do not know. the documents, we do not know what is in the documents or why he has them. we have hunter biden who may or may not have been living at the house. there is conflicting information. he had listed it as his residence on a credit card and his tax returns and said he was paying rent. if you look at the biden taxes they do not list the rent as income so there is a lot of confusion. if he is bringing in foreign business associates to do business, that raises questions of criminal liability. i do not know -- there is still so much on answered. it is hard to make those judgments about these cases with president biden. host: iowa, mike, good morning. independent. caller: i will call and say up on the hill there is harry and lloyd from dumb and dumber at the white house. he is as guilty as sin and no less guilty than this a donald trump is. i believe donald trump is guilty but i believe dumb and dumber is guilty. the border is a laugh. what border security do we have? there is no border security and there hasn't been since dumb and dumber have come into the white house. another thing, this host, you seem like a nice lady but it seems like you are defending the president when you're trying to say maybe he didn't know. he knew. he got all that money from china. our president has sold out to the chinese like everybody said trump was to the russians but there was no proof of that. there is more proof dumb and dumber sold out to the chinese. guest: i think the answer to that question is the same as my answer to the earlier question. there is still so much we do not know, there are still so many unanswered questions. it is hard to say whether or not there is any claim in all liability -- is any criminal liability at all. host: the question i was trying to get out is is there legal distinction between what somebody knows and explicitly directing action. guest: there is no legal distinction. >> "washington journal" contue