Littwin: Mayor Mike Johnston appeared before a House oversight committee that appears to have no interest in overseeing anything  

You may be surprised to learn that the House Oversight Committee — which grilled Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and three other mayors about their so-called “sanctuary city” policies  — is not really interested in overseeing anything.

But the Republican-controlled committee was interested in conducting something very much like a show trial, which, uh, co-starred Lauren Boebert — who, with no evidence, accused Johnston of shipping migrants to Aurora — in the role of one of several bumbling prosecutors.

One GOP member of the committee,  Anna Paulina Luna, R-Florida, did say she would ask Donald Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, to investigate Johnston and the three other mayors.

Luna added that she wasn’t trying to “bully” the mayors, which, in the world of poker, they call a tell. Of course she was trying to bully and intimidate them.

She said they should be investigated for breaking a federal law by “harboring illegal aliens.” It’s an absurd charge on its face, of course, but when your leader has been convicted of 32 felonies, pretty much anything goes.

Meanwhile, Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Louisiana, cited a comment Johnston once made about being prepared to go to jail if necessary to prevent ICE or related agencies from raiding Denver schools and churches, which a Trump executive order now allows.

“One of you said you were willing to go to jail,” Higgins said. “We might give you that opportunity.” 

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No wonder Johnston and the other mayors found it prudent to lawyer up. 

But it doesn’t require much investigation to figure out the committee has no interest in overseeing anything important.

All you have to know is that the committee has refused, to this point and probably forever, to subpoena Elon Musk and his minor-league DOGERS about their chainsaw rampage through the federal government — firing workers at will, laying off others, freezing already congressionally approved funds, hacking into everyone’s Social Security information and other data meant to be private, while destroying federal departments.

They can’t even get a resolution passed for the committee to see the documents pertaining to those who have been fired, both willy and nilly, by Musk and his minions.

Let’s be honest: There is no one in America who requires more oversight than Musk, who, in truly big news, was reined in — at least a little — by Trump at a chaotic cabinet meeting Thursday.

When Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio engaged in some serious, uh, debate about firing people. Trump actually sided with Rubio and other cabinet members who also argued with Musk. According to reports, Trump said staffing decisions should ultimately be in the hands of department secretaries and that Musk should play an advisory role.

But then — shock! — a few hours later, Trump told reporters this about Musk and cabinet secretaries: “Elon and the group are going to be watching them. If they can cut, it’s better. And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.”

Are you confused? Of course you are, unless you understand that chaos is the point here. I mean, around the same time, Trump was defending Russia’s latest major missile assault on Ukraine, which came after Trump stopped supplying intelligence and military aid to Ukraine. Only hours earlier, he had threatened Russia with “large scale sanctions” because of the attack.

In a vain attempt to figure out exactly what Trump and Musk and DOGE are actually up to, the ranking member of the oversight committee, Kweisi Mfume, D-Maryland, has introduced two resolutions that would require the Trump administration to turn over all records about Musk’s “purge” of non-partisan employees and, according to an accompanying fact sheet, his installation of “political loyalists willing to turn a blind eye to corruption and grift.”

Would corruption and grift enabled by Musk’s team be worth investigating? How about the many potential conflicts of interests by the richest person in the world?

For that matter, how about the DEI-related purge, which could hardly be more openly racist? Just ask the Black chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the female Secretary of the Navy who were fired for, well, you know.

But overseeing Musk would require offending Trump, so we know that is a dead letter in current Republican politics. And so the resolutions have gone nowhere.

But grilling mayors about following their cities’ lawfully passed policies concerning immigration is perfectly fine. Not only was Boebert, who’s a member of the committee, on hand, but so was every Colorado GOP congressperson, including those who aren’t on the committee. In fairness, it should be noted that Rep. Jeff Hurd, who took Boebert’s seat in the 3rd Congressional District, actually asked a few reasonable questions of Johnston. The others, not so much.

But if the committee had wanted to get to the heart of the overwhelming numbers of migrants who have landed in Denver over the past few years — which they clearly didn’t — they would have called on Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who, in a clear provocation,  bused many of the nearly 42,000 migrants arriving in Denver.

When members asked Johnston, a Democrat, why he hadn’t asked about immigration status of those who came to Denver, the same question might have been asked of Abbott, a Republican, who shipped them from Texas to Denver and other blue cities in blue states.

But, no.

The easy answer for Johnston was that it’s against city law to ask about immigration status. And it’s against state law for local law enforcement to keep immigrants in jail so that ICE would have time to pick them up. Denver does, however, inform ICE about the time of an undocumented migrant’s release if it has issued a warrant for someone in custody.

And, as Johnston told the committee, it’s actually the role of Congress, not cities, to pass immigration policy. But why pass legislation when Trump can simply rule by fiat and save them the trouble?

I’d say the hearing probably helped Johnston — and not his GOP persecutors. Johnston cited scripture about taking in those in need, and he talked specifically about what Denver’s role should be when facing the question of “what will you do with a mom and two kids dropped on the streets of our city with no warm clothes, with no food and no place to stay?”

Denver did what it should have done — and what, I’m pretty sure, most Denverites wanted the mayor to do. And now the city-funded shelters are closed and Johnston’s handling of the crisis — when as many as 10 buses a day were arriving in  the dead of winter with children often wearing sandals — was basically a success.

In the hearing, Johnston pointedly remained calm despite all the provocative questioning, while saying that Denver has never called itself a sanctuary city. Maybe not. That’s basically a matter of semantics. But the semantics are actually important because Trump is threatening to withhold federal funds from what he considers sanctuary cities.

I’m basically fine with the sanctuary description of a city that Johnston calls “welcoming.” In the Hebrew Bible, sanctuary means a “sacred place.” 

I wouldn’t call Denver exactly sacred. But I would say that Johnston wanted to do the right thing about the needy migrants shipped to Denver for Abbott’s political gain. 

And that the House Oversight Committee was interested only in trying — and, I hope, failing — to intimidate him and the other mayors for the great crime of offering help, and even sanctuary, to those in desperate need.

Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.

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