The Jan. 6 House committee's decision to withdraw its subpoena for testimony from former President Donald Trump shows that "the whole thing was a political stunt," former acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said on Newsmax on Friday.
"They had no interest in ultimately bringing Donald Trump to the House to testify," Whitaker said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "They withdrew the subpoena because Trump had challenged it in court, and if they didn't withdraw, they were concerned long-term about whether a court would find that you couldn't subpoena a former president of the United States … it makes strategic sense."
Meanwhile, the White House is taking a stance against demands that are coming from House Republicans for records concerning upcoming investigations on immigration and the Hunter Biden laptop. But Whitaker said eventually there will be a "showdown."
"We'll see if there's noncompliance if the Department of Justice has an appetite to prosecute those cases like they do, like, for example, Steve Bannon," said Whitaker. "Hunter Biden has been pretty much flaunting his relationship with the president … we'll see how tough those Republicans are and how much oversight they can ultimately do.
"But I think the whole ballgame is still the criminal investigation going on out of the district of Delaware by the Trump holdover U.S. attorney."
Hunter Biden, meanwhile, "should be" nervous about the criminal investigation about him by the FBI and federal government, said Whitaker.
"The stakes are very high," he said. "One of the things that's going to be interesting is these House committee investigations are always best when they're bipartisan, with both sides seeking the truth. You know, the Jan. 6 committee was so one-sided and so partisan, the American people ultimately saw it for what it was, and it had very little impact on the overall narrative."
But with the nature of American politics, there is no cooperation at this point, said Whitaker.
"The left pretty much burnt those relationships down as they were trying to advance and ultimately try to expand their majority and they failed," said Whitaker. "I don't see that Republicans played the same game."
Lawmakers, meanwhile, should expand on what was learned from the Twitter Files posts concerning interaction with federal law enforcement and censorship, in a probe that would include other social media sites, and that would be a "very legitimate bipartisan investigation," Whitaker said.
"You could see how Facebook was interacting with the FBI, how YouTube and Google and others were interacting with the FBI and the entire federal government," he said. "You have to look at, at the same time, that coordination on the hunter Biden suppression and that story regarding his laptop, So I think those are two very fertile areas."
Bringing a resolution so such incidents don't happen again will take "leadership across the board," said Whitaker. "We need better leadership out of the people that are running these organizations."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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