The problem with the GOP’s new Covid committee is its members

As expected, House Republicans have launched all kinds of new investigations since retaking the majority in the chamber, and some of them aren’t related to Hunter Biden. NBC News reported, for example, on a new congressional panel launching a new probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, the chair of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and House Oversight and Accountability chair James Comer, R-Ky., sent letters to Dr. Anthony Fauci, senior Biden administration officials like National Intelligence Director Avril Haines and the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a New York nonprofit group focused on emerging infectious diseases.

Unlike so many of the House GOP’s other investigations, this one doesn’t necessarily have to be ridiculous. There’s already been a congressional Covid investigation, which produced important findings, but that examination did not focus specifically on the virus’ origins.

If members want to take constructive steps to consider such questions in a mature and responsible way, it’s certainly possible that the panel could generate worthwhile information.

But some skepticism is in order — not because of the committee’s goals, but because of its members. NBC News had a separate report a few weeks ago on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and some of his problematic personnel assignments.

… McCarthy named Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who had been suspended from social media platforms for promoting Covid misinformation, to the select panel on the coronavirus pandemic. Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, a Republican who was Trump’s White House physician, also got the nod for the Covid panel.

To put it mildly, these were not encouraging choices. Greene continues to push dangerous public health misinformation regarding the virus, and she was even permanently banned from Twitter after falsely pushing nonsense about “extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths.” (Elon Musk later reinstated her account.) The right-wing congresswoman also compared Capitol Hill mask requirements to the Holocaust.

Jackson, meanwhile, argued in 2021 that the omicron variant was part of a secret Democratic plot related to the midterm elections.

They’re not the only misguided choices for the panel. A recent HuffPost report added, “McCarthy’s other GOP picks for the COVID subcommittee include Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa), who spread false information about the CDC planning to mandate COVID vaccines for children and about children not being affected by COVID; Rep. Michael Cloud (Texas), who in March 2020 voted against the Families First COVID Response Act, which provided emergency funding for free COVID testing and paid leave for workers hit by the pandemic; Rep. John Joyce (Pa.), who filed a bill to block the government from issuing standardized COVID vaccine status cards; and Rep. Rich McCormick (Ga.), an ER physician who spread misinformation about masks and COVID vaccines.”

It was against this backdrop that McCarthy recently appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” and host Margaret Brennan asked the right question: Given all of the far-right extremists on the Covid panel, “how is anyone supposed to take that work seriously and find that work credible?”

The Republican leader responded by arguing that there are a lot of “questions out there.”

I suppose that’s true. The first question should probably be, “Why in the world did McCarthy ask unserious radicals to help probe the origins of the coronavirus pandemic?”

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