Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Thursday named a new chairman and new lawmakers to the House Intelligence Committee after President-elect Donald Trump had concerns about the former pro-Ukraine, pro-surveillance chairman.
Johnson, as the Speaker, has the sole discretion to appoint the chairman the Intelligence Committee, which is a select committee.
Johnson tapped Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) to be chairman, and also named Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MOI), Ben Cline (R-VA), Greg Steube (R-FL), Claudia Tenney (R-NY), and Pat Fallon (R-TX) to the select committee.
Crawford in his eighth term in Congress and has started his fifth term on the Intel Committee.
He said in a written statement:
As Chairman, I will aggressively uphold our mandate to provide credible and robust oversight of the Intelligence Community’s funding and activities. Without aggressive oversight and vigorous protection of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, the IC is prone to give in to mission creep and skirt U.S. laws. In all our work, I pledge to preserve Americans’ constitutional rights even as we work to support the IC in doing everything required to collect indispensable information from our foreign adversaries.
