by Luke Rosiak at The Daily Wire
After the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, Democrat leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer replace two members of the Capitol Police’s three-person board of directors with people who have overseen what critics say is the partisan mobilization of Congress’ law enforcement arm.
The final member could not be so easily ousted because he was appointed to a 10-year term by President Donald Trump. Now he could have his career ended by a highly unusual criminal investigation that appears to be targeting him for, of all things, the minor offense of personal use of a government vehicle including an unauthorized stop at Walmart.
J. Brett Blanton serves as Architect of the Capitol, tasked with overseeing the U.S. Congress’ physical campus. That position also makes him, alongside the House and Senate Sergeants-at-Arms, a member of the Capitol Police board. But soon after January 6, he became the target of an investigation that was initially spurred by the General Services Administration and was taken up by an obscure congressional oversight body.
“The Architect is the only thing standing in the way of turning the Capitol Police into Pelosi’s army,” Mike Davis, a former Republican staffer for the Senate Judiciary Committee who now leads the Article III Project, told The Daily Wire. “They’re going to weaponize the Department of Justice to go after the Trump-appointed Architect of the Capitol because his daughter borrowed his car? Biden has turned the Justice Department into a third-world hit squad.”
The Architect of the Capitol office has a little-known inspector general office dedicated to detecting waste in the office. In the past, it has done little: The Government Accountability Office found in 2016 that the IG had a budget of $1.8 million paying for 10 auditors and investigators, yet pinpointed only $7,620 in misspent money in 2015. The current IG is Christopher Failla, who was appointed in 2017 by previous Architect of the Capitol Stephen Ayers, who in turn was nominated by former President Barack Obama.
On April 27, Failla wrote to congressional overseers
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