Rep. Jasmine Crockett attended a House Oversight Committee hearing last fall, growing frustrated as she listened to Republicans accuse President Biden of impeachable crimes without providing any evidence. I came up with an idea.
Mr. Crockett, a freshman Democrat from Texas and a former defense attorney, called in his aides and rushed over a stack of photos showing boxes of classified government documents hidden in the bathroom of former President Donald J. Mar-a-Lago. I asked them to print it. Trump's club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Moments later, Mr. Crockett waved a photo over his head and accused Republicans of pushing unsubstantiated allegations against Mr. Biden while ignoring clear evidence that Mr. Trump had broken the law.
“When we start talking about things like evidence, they want to act like they turn a blind eye,” Crockett said with a mixture of anger and bewilderment. “These are our state secrets,” she added, apparently using an expletive to describe the plumbing in the bathroom.
The moment went viral on social media. The White House took notice. So did House Democratic leaders. Suddenly, it was Crockett, not the Republican Party chasing Biden, that captured the nation's attention.
That performance has become something of a symbol of the Republican effort to impeach Biden, which has stalled in recent weeks as Republicans have tried in vain to substantiate their claims of wrongdoing by the president.
As Republicans move forward with their case against Biden, Democrats on the oversight committee, which includes an unusually large number of freshmen, are calling on them to capitalize on opportunity, political mood, and serve as the president's courageous defenders. established a position.
It's a strategy Democrats began planning more than a year ago. Back in January 2023, they selected seven freshmen to serve on the Oversight Committee, the most of any committee. The group included lawyers with debate experience and a sense of how to communicate in a way that cut through the noise of a highly polarized environment fueled by social media.
As a result, the impeachment process engineered by Republicans to damage Biden politically has instead raised the profile of a group of ready-to-play first-term Democrats who have become part of the partisan scrum of the House Oversight Committee. This was the result.
In addition to Mr. Crockett, there is Congressman Dan Goldman, a former federal prosecutor from New York. He has made it his mission to beat Republicans to the microphone outside of closed-door interviews and frame testimony before his Republican rivals.
California Rep. Robert Garcia peppers his remarks with cheeky pop culture references, garnering attention on social media and drawing attention to his defense of Democrats.
And Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida has earned a reputation as a chief opponent of Rep. James R. Comer, who is leading the investigation as committee chairman. Mr. Moskowitz has repeatedly taken advantage of Mr. Kamel with irreverent tactics, including once appearing at a hearing wearing a mask of President Vladimir V. Putin and deriding him as a Russian puppet. Republicans are trying to impeach him even without a concerted effort by Democrats. Biden would have a hard time gaining momentum. Its leaders have been unable to establish the evidence needed to persuade mainstream and battleground members to move forward with impeachment. Impeachment is an extremely important task given the minority. Then their investigation suffered a near-fatal blow when a key informant was indicted on charges of fabricating a story that Biden had accepted bribes.
Many Republicans now acknowledge that Biden's push for impeachment has all but died out, and Comer has instead shifted his focus to exploring the possibility of criminal referral, calling it “an investigation into my investigation.” It is called the culmination.
Democrats say their strategy was crucial in derailing the project. They fought Republicans over facts, tried to shift the focus to Mr. Trump's misdeeds, and, perhaps most importantly, mirrored Republican incitement tactics.
“I think it's clear that we sent them an out message, which is why they're now coming out and admitting that they're not going to impeach Joe Biden,” Moskowitz said. Ta.
They did this under the leadership of the Oversight Committee's top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, and his No. 2, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
Ocasio-Cortez said the most important thing is to counter Republican rhetoric before it takes root. She wanted to avoid a similar case against Mr. Biden before the Oversight Committee, as Republicans ramped up momentum to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas.
“A lot of what we do is direct plays and think about strategy,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “What questions and topics are best for which members? How do we want to build to a crescendo and tell a story during the hearing? Can we work together like this?”
In another era, a freshman like Crockett would have been unlikely to be on a coach's radar. But there's a new model on Capitol Hill, partly inspired by Ocasio-Cortez herself, who was elected as the youngest woman elected to Congress at age 28 in 2018.
She learned her supervisory skills under the committee's chairman, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a Maryland Democrat who died in 2019. She recalled a time when lawmakers had to choose between serving on the Financial Services Committee, which can raise large sums of money for campaign contributions from Wall Street, and the oversight branch. , Ocasio-Cortez made a choice that no previous New York state senator would have considered.
Garcia said the oversight committee was his “first choice,” even though it is known as the home of partisan battles and big stage events.
Garcia's moment of social media fame — which he admits was pre-planned — came during a January hearing in which he mocked Republicans' push to impeach Biden. To do so, he mocked Republicans' push to impeach Biden by quoting almost verbatim a famously dramatic and detailed takedown from an episode. A reality show called “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.''
Garcia said from his seat at the Capitol podium that Democrats “have receipts. Evidence. Timelines. Screenshots. Foreign governments are funneling money into President Donald Trump's pockets through Trump's estate.” We have everything we need to conclusively prove that all of that is unconstitutional.”
Mr. Trump denies wrongdoing in his dealings with foreign governments. But the moment had its intended effect. “Real Housewives” loved Garcia's remarks, which were shared widely on social media, and Bravo host Andy Cohen featured them on his nightly show “Watch What Happens Live.”
“We need to communicate to the public in a way that they can understand. I think that moment for me reached so many people who weren't paying attention to what was going on on the Oversight Board.” said Garcia, the first openly gay person to be elected. He said in an interview that he had submitted it to Congress. “It was effective because they understood it in a way that spoke to them.”
Mr. Goldman took a different approach. As the lead lawyer in the first impeachment inquiry against Mr. Trump, Mr. Goldman knows the evidence about Ukraine and Hunter Biden better than anyone.
His job is to publicly push back against Republican efforts to twist the facts to fit claims of wrongdoing by the president and his family.
“I knew the Republicans were going to do private depositions and selectively leak parts of them to build a false story. So I wasn't going to let them do that.” said Goldman.
It's clear that Comer is losing patience with Democrats and their tactics.
He has complained that new students are threatening witnesses. He called Moskowitz a “Smurf” and encouraged the new students to dress like Smurfs at the next hearing, wearing blue shoes and Smurf ties.
“I've never seen witness intimidation like what we saw today,” Comer told Newsmax in February, referring to Raskin, Goldman, Garcia and Crockett by name. “They were waving their fingers. They were pointing and shouting.”
In recent hearings, Moskowitz insisted he would seek a vote to impeach Biden, knowing full well that Republicans lacked the votes. Comer appeared irritated and refused to make the motion. But even Rep. Jim Jordan, one of the top Republicans leading the impeachment push, smiled.
Mr. Crockett did not seek to serve on the oversight committee. She was interested in financial services or justice. But Rep. Katherine M. Clark, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, persuaded her to join, and it became a natural progression.
Ms. Crockett is no stranger to partisan battles. She emerged from the Texas Capitol, but Republicans at one point issued a warrant for her arrest amid controversy over Texas voting laws. (A framed warrant now hangs in her office in Dallas.)
Since she frequently appears on TV, she sneaks into a special make-up room in her office to make sure she's camera-ready.
She and other freshmen have had frequent battles with Republican bomb-throwers like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. One of Crockett and Garcia's first tasks will be to refute Greene's claims that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6 were political prisoners being held in inhumane conditions. In order to do so, I was to tour the D.C. prison with Mr. Green.
Later, Mr. Crockett found himself sitting close to Mr. Greene in a Congressional hearing as the Georgia state lawmaker showed a naked photo of the president's son Hunter Biden performing a sex act.
“It was one of those 'we froze' moments, like, what do we do?” Ms. Crockett recalled. “We were all looking at each other, just like that. We were all in shock and awe.”
But Crockett is rarely at a loss for words. Her committee speeches have been repeatedly featured prominently in the left-wing press.
“With all the talk and antics, people think, 'Oh, that's what she wanted,' when in fact that wasn't the case,” Crockett said of her role on the oversight committee. Ta. “But it definitely worked.”
