Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melba. We're following news out of the DOJ Trump probe where special counsel, Jack Smith, is calling Mike Pence's bluff in their view and trying to force him under oath in a grand jury. We have more on that later. Plus, the top investigator for the January 6th committee is speaking out on that big New York Times story that was making waves. You might have seen it. Well, he's here.

He makes his beat debut later in the hour. Our top story right now is about how Republicans are using their power in the House. We all saw Kevin McCarthy clash with those hardliners.

And during those clashes, when he had to get all of his votes on the House floor, he promised

all kinds of concessions, including promoting what was then his most ardent foe, Matt Gates, to a pivotal committee devoted to basically looking at government investigations and attacking the FBI and DOJ.

And that itself is a shift in Washington's power dynamics. This is important for the story I'm

about to tell you right now. For decades, members in both parties lobbied to get on

committees like armed services and appropriations, controlling money, or some sought

prestigious assignments like foreign affairs. Now, these hardline Republicans are angling to be involved in investigating the

investigators. That's the committee they want on. It's partly about politics because there is a

political fixation on the deep state or on Hunter Biden's laptop. And that's a daily thing for some of

these folks. And they just do that year after year after year.

That's the politics.

Well, then there's the media which relates to the politics,

but this is about media attention,

and the loop between Fox News and the GOP that pushes these stories and pushes the Republicans who lead the charge

and makes stars out of some previously

unknown members of Congress, something that we have all seen. I bet even if you don't watch Fox all

the time, you're familiar with how this works. And let me be very clear, because I want to break this

down. Sometimes the cycle starts at Fox, and they book and promote those people.

Other times, it emanates from congressional Republicans,

which brings us to how Speaker McCarthy is using his power to give surveillance footage from January 6th,

which is a big deal exclusively to Tucker Carlson and facing backlash over that.

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