Washington, D.C. — Today, Representative Barry Moore (AL-02) issued the following statement regarding his vote against holding Steve Bannon in contempt. “Instead of leaving investigations of the January 6th attack on the Capitol to professional law enforcement, Democrats and 'never-Trumpers' are dead set on inappropriately muddying up the waters with partisan politics,” said Moore. “Speaker Pelosi proved her select committee was just a political witch hunt when she blocked Republicans’ choices to serve on it. Democrats need to let the professional nonpartisan entities investigating January 6th continue their work and get the House busy confronting the multiple Biden crises, including: rising prices, a broken supply chain, chaos at the border, increasing violent crime, and continued fallout from the Afghanistan debacle. "Democrats may think they can distract the media and the public with partisan grandstanding, but the American people will hold them accountable for ignoring these crises.” Click here for an audio recording of Moore's statement. BACKGROUND While Congress has a significant and important oversight power to secure needed information in order to legislate, it does not have enumerated constitutional powers to conduct investigations or issue subpoenas outside of that scope. The issue before the House is not whether Congress should conduct oversight, but instead whether Congress has the authority to conduct this investigation for a legislative purpose. Congress’s oversight authority also does not include law enforcement powers – those powers belong to the Executive and Judicial Branch and the FBI and the US Attorney’s office are the law enforcement entities investigating the events of January 6th. The Supreme Court itself has agreed that Congress has no authority to issue a subpoena for law enforcement purposes and if Congress believes a crime has been committed, that is the purview of the judicial and executive branches of government. The Court also agreed that Congress has no authority to issue a subpoena to compel exposure for the sake of exposure because that is not deemed a valid legislative purpose, nor may Congress issue a subpoena in an attempt to “try” someone before a committee for any crime or wrongdoing. Speaker Pelosi’s select committee does not get to step into the shoes of law enforcement solely because it would be politically expedient. | 