Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Thursday selected Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) to chair the House Intelligence Committee, elevating the veteran panel member to the role after he withdrew Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) of the top job.
The change came as a surprise on Capitol Hill, where Turner’s ouster prompted an outcry from Democrats and some Republicans who were given no advance notice of the move, and suspected that the party’s “America First” wing helped expel Turner.
But the selection of Crawford by Johnson, the most senior Republican lawmaker on the panel, could help calm the concerns of Republicans focused on national security.
“Our intelligence community and its oversight must maintain the highest levels of trust. The House Intelligence Committee will play a critical role in this work in the new Congress, and Rick Crawford will provide leadership principles as president,” Johnson said in a statement. “He has earned the respect of his colleagues through his years of faithful service on the committee and his unwavering focus on the challenges facing our country.”
Johnson’s announcement came less than 24 hours after news that he would not reappoint Turner to lead the Intelligence Committee in the 119th Congress amid, one Republican lawmaker said, complaints from hard-line conservatives and of “Mar-a-Lago” about his leadership.
Johnson has denied that President-elect Trump had any role in the decision, and a Trump spokesman also indicated that he did not request the reform. The president has the sole authority to appoint the chairman of the Intelligence Committee and members of the GOP.
Crawford, who is in his eighth term in Congress and beginning his fifth term on the Intelligence Committee, had tried unsuccessfully to become chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee late last year.
He declined to comment when asked about reports of his appointment before Johnson’s announcement, sticking to the president. But when asked if he was interested in the role, the Arkansas Republican left the door open.
“Everybody would be interested in a position as committee chair, so I don’t think I’m any different than anybody else,” he said.
Crawford supported the renewal of a controversial law that allows for warrantless surveillance of foreigners when they are abroad, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
It’s a move that has earned the ire of the party’s MAGA wing, which sees the intelligence tool as a backdoor to access Americans and wants to include a warrant requirement.
Turner was also a strong supporter of the tool, putting him at odds with staunch Trump supporters like Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a critic of the law and one of the few members of the House Committee on ‘Intelligence that voted against extending FISA 702.
The renewal of FISA 702 will be one of the main issues facing him this year, as Congress voted to extend the measure for two years, prompting what will undoubtedly be a controversial reauthorization in the Trump presidency.
Crawford also voted against a $60.8 billion Ukraine aid package by 2024, saying in a statement at the time: “While the entire Western world supports Ukraine’s struggle to expel Vladimir Putin’s invasion force from Ukraine, I cannot vote in good faith to send billions of dollars in non-military financial aid to Ukraine to shore up its economy when the Americans are struggling with rising costs at home.”
Turner, on the other hand, has been a strong Republican supporter of aid to Ukraine, drawing the ire of Trump-allied America First conservatives.
Crawford has played an important role on the Intelligence committee in recent weeks.
He led a subcommittee investigation into the origins of the anomalous health incidents (AHI), also known as Havana syndrome, that have been plaguing some in the intelligence community.
In this assessment he diverged from the conclusion of intelligence leaders, stating that a foreign adversary was probably behind the attack.
“I am convinced that there is a foreign adversary responsible for these. … Now to be clear, this does not mean that all of these reported incidents are attributable to a foreign adversary. It just means that the evidence supports it in many cases,” Crawford told reporters last month.
“This is not speculation on my part. I am telling you that we have collected evidence that I can say with confidence that we can attribute many of these AHI attacks to foreign adversaries.”
In doing so, Crawford was highly critical of the Biden administration, criticizing the president for an issue the county has grappled with since 2016.
But he blamed the White House for not taking action and suggested they were engaged in a cover-up.
“The Biden administration and IC leadership have attempted to obstruct the Subcommittee’s investigation into AHIs in order to keep the truth about AHIs from Congress and, by extension, the American public,” he said, using shorthand for to the intelligence community.
Across the aisle, Democrats wasted no time criticizing Johnson’s decision to replace Turner as head of the Intel panel, accusing the president of pandering to Trump’s wishes at the expense of national security.
“The Constitution requires Congress to act as a check and balance on the executive branch, not to meet its demands,” said Rep. Jim Himes (Conn.), the top Democrat on the committee.
