EXCLUSIVE: House Committee Gives Cabinet Secretaries 5 Days To Release ‘Bidenbucks’ Docs
U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil is giving five stonewalling Biden administration cabinet chiefs five days to comply with his committee’s subpoenas or face “additional remedies for noncompliance.”
On Monday, the Wisconsin Republican who serves as chairman of the Committee on House Administration sent follow-up letters to Biden’s attorney general, and secretaries of the departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Labor, warning the agency heads his patience is running thin with their failure to turn over documents related to Biden’s constitutionally suspect voter registration scheme.
Steil demands Biden’s stonewallers turn over the requested documents by Friday.
“The Department should produce those documents required by law to comply with the subpoena in good faith. Failure to promptly comply with the subpoena will leave the Committee in a position where it will require compelled transcribed interviews of numerous Departmental employees and pursue additional remedies for noncompliance with a Congressional subpoena,” the congressman wrote in the letters, exclusively provided to The Federalist.
Defying Congress
The Biden administration has had all kinds of problems acting in “good faith,” and this isn’t its first failure to comply with congressional subpoenas. Federal agencies have been particularly bad in releasing records related to Biden’s so-called “Promoting Access to Voting” executive order — deploying the executive branch to drive the election and re-election efforts of Democrats.
It’s been a month and a half since Steil issued subpoenas to 15 cabinet secretaries and department heads demanding they turn over the records. The June subpoenas followed Steil’s first request for the documents related to Biden’s Executive Order 14019, a request he made a month before that.
To date, the committee has not received any records, with the exception of documents previously made public through press releases and Freedom of Information Act requests, Steil said. In short, the Biden administration is thumbing its nose at the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, defying the will of the first branch.
“Clearly, the letter and production of documents you provided did not comply with the subpoena, were not comprehensive, and virtually all documents that were listed in the ‘Schedule to Subpoena’ were not included in the production,” the congressman wrote in his warning letter to Xavier Becerra, secretary of Health and Human Services.
‘Bidenbucks’
In March 2021, Biden signed the executive order innocuously billed as an initiative to bring more voters to the polls. But documents obtained by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and other watchdog organizations unveiled far-left groups working with federal and state agencies in targeted voter registration and mobilization drives to turn out traditionally Democrat voters.
Critics have billed it “Bidenbucks,” a nod to the hundreds of millions of dollars in so-called election administration grants funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg during the Covid-captive 2020 election. The brunt of those grants went to Democrat stronghold cities to help target left-leaning voters. As I reported earlier this year, however, Bidenbucks is making “Zuckbucks” look like chump change.
Congressional Republicans have sought details on the program, only to be bogged down by an intransigent administration. The Administration Committee wants to know how much taxpayer money is involved and precisely what it is funding — without congressional approval.
‘Troubling to the Committee’
HHS, like the other agencies subpoenaed, provided the committee with previously available records. The agency, for instance, responded to the committee’s subpoena with information about the Health Care Marketplace. Obtusely, “HHS provided no documents about its plans to register voters at any of its many locations throughout the nation,” Steil’s letter to the secretary notes.
Biden’s executive order required federal agencies to come up with a strategic plan outlining how they would implement the voter registration campaign. The departments under congressional watch included none of that information in unsatisfactory responses to the subpoenas. They also failed to include communications on the left-wing groups reportedly assisting the administration — a list that includes dozens of hard-left activists, from AFL-CIO to the Southern Poverty Law Center to Vot-ER.
Watchdog groups have received documents from within HHS’ Administration for Children and Families referring to “Action items and milestones” tied to the executive order, as well as an “updated spreadsheet, with revised action items and milestones.” The agency failed to send those communications to the committee.
It also did not turn over a plan to transform 1,400-plus Community Health Centers — which have more than 14,000 sites — “into Voter Registration Hubs,” Steil’s letter states. The agency also failed to release documents on its “selection of particular Indian Tribes for voter registration through the Indian Health Service” or communications involving the Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to the warning letter.
The committee is demanding the release of all of the materials.
“Additionally, it is troubling to the Committee that the Department would comply with its statutory obligations under the FOIA statutes and release documents to the public and yet fail to comply with a Congressional subpoena,” Steil wrote.
‘The Rules Apply to You All Too’
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s politically weaponized Department of Justice provided the committee a single document, Steil’s letter says. Titled, “Know Your Voting Rights: Your Guide to federal Voting Rights Laws,” the packet was already available on the agency’s website.
During Garland’s tenure at the DOJ, the agency charged with enforcing the laws has routinely put itself above the law. Earlier this year, a federal judge lambasted the DOJ after department officials told two employees to skip depositions in the Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Biden.
“The rules apply to you all too,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes scolded department lawyers at a hearing in April, NBC News reported.
Earlier this month, House Republicans sued Garland, demanding he turn over the audio recording of Biden’s interview with the special counsel overseeing the president’s classified documents case. Biden escaped criminal prosecution allegedly because the special prosecutor believed at trial the octogenarian “would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” On the last day to comply with the congressional subpoena, the DOJ absurdly claimed executive privilege in refusing the audio recording’s release.
‘Crucial in Toppling’ Trump
In his letter to Adrianne Todman, acting secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Steil wrote the agency has failed to release a “substantial volume of documents.” Indeed, HUD turned over just four documents, Steil said, including a release on a Biden administration policy giving federal employees paid time off to vote.
The agency reportedly has selected locations across the United States to “register voters as the Department issued guidance ‘to executive directors of more than 3,000 public housing authorities’ on ‘run[ning] voter registration drives through public housing agencies,” Steil wrote.
“Moreover, federal housing officials have advised local agencies on the process of applying to become a voter registration agency, as well as setting up ‘drop boxes for ballots on the premises,’” the chairman added.
The leftist groups working on and often leading the federalized GOTV efforts learned a lot in 2020 from Zuckerbucks and the efforts to target left-leaning voters.
“Intentional efforts to engage these voter[s]” in the months before the 2020 election were critical in turning out low-income voters in the all-important swing states where Biden’s margin of victory was approximately 3 percent or lower, according to a report from the leftist “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.” Far-left Common Dreams noted the targeted campaigns as “crucial in toppling” Republican President Donald Trump.
The leftists are at it again, this time using the full force of the federal government and taxpayer resources to target millions more left-leaning voters. Steil said the American people deserve answers from the secretive Biden administration.
“The Biden-Harris administration continues trying to hide their strategic plan to use federal taxpayer dollars for partisan, get-out-the-vote activities,” the congressman told The Federalist. “We know these agencies have developed and begun implementing get-out-the-vote efforts, yet they continue to defy our subpoena request.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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