Talk about bringing back norms. The Democrats have brought back something but it’s anything but “normal.” They’ve brought back the “Committee” that’s starting to border on the McCarthy-like.

I don’t say that lightly. The Jan. 6 Committee is now asking to “speak” to Sean Hannity, seeking his “voluntary cooperation” in its effort to find anything with which they can to smear him or Republicans. Their excuse? He sent texts to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about his concerns. Okay, and so?

The Committee is seeking information from Sean Hannity.

Chair @BennieGThompson and Vice Chair @RepLizCheney request Hannity answer questions about matters including communications between Hannity and the former President, Mark Meadows, and others in the days surrounding Jan 6th. pic.twitter.com/wXtOGSsneg

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) January 4, 2022

None of Hannity’s texts indicated that he knew that there was going to be a riot or that he had any involvement in it. You know — that thing the Committee claims that they are investigating. The texts show a natural concern about challenging the election. Again, so? It’s similar to how the Committee tried to make something about Fox hosts being concerned during the riot and calling Meadows to see what could be done to stop it. The texts, if anything, were exonerating.

Talking about strategy with Meadows or President Donald Trump isn’t any of the Committee’s business, unless they can show a demonstrable nexus to the riot. Otherwise, this is just a smear and an attempt to get private communications from political opponents. Hence, the McCarthyism comparison I made. Plus it’s very concerning when you have the government going after a journalist.

Now they know Hannity will likely tell them to pound sand. Then they would use that refusal to intimate he knew more and doesn’t want to help them. They may or may not drop a subpoena. But ultimately, they don’t want to have him testify because he wasn’t involved and he’d say that. They want to smear him just with the intimation because they know most people on the left, like easily-manipulated seals, would just run with it.

They are already trying to push the “Chris Cuomo” point: that if Hannity was involved politically with Trump, that Fox should fire him for having a conflict. But Hannity is opinion journalism. Unlike Cuomo, he isn’t pretending to be objective news. There isn’t any conflict, unlike Cuomo. Moreover, Hannity didn’t lie and didn’t allegedly target his brother’s accusers. Fox would just laugh at them.

There’s also another thing likely going on here — the effort to potentially chill anyone around from helping or being involved with Trump to impair his ability to run again in the future. They’re hoping to impair or sow dissension.

As Jay Sekulow, Hannity’s attorney, pointed out, the Committee is going down a bad road, “If true, any such request would raise serious constitutional issues including First Amendment concerns regarding freedom of the press.”

That’s the problem with this whole thing. Let no one doubt what this Committee is about. There is plenty of federal investigating of the event going on with the FBI. This Committee was always and only about doing what they could in the run-up to 2022 to attack Republicans. Except there’s a fundamental problem that they have: they have no evidence of involvement of any Republican in anything apart from upset over the election. But they don’t care about this, just like they didn’t care that Russia collusion was a hoax — it’s about how they can use the riot to help their own ends.