Testimony heard at a House Judiciary Committee field hearing in Chicago to discuss crime was a "real eye-opener," and it was "unbelievable" that no Democrats attended to hear what was being said, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald told Newsmax on Wednesday.
"The testimony that we received from former members of the Chicago Police Department, I think, shined a light on what many of us were worried about, and that was the idea that community policing has been abandoned at this time," the Wisconsin Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
The hearing was led by Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and focused on crime, the prosecution policies of Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx, and the enactment statewide of cashless bail laws, reports The Chicago Tribune. The testimony was heard at the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7.
"There's so much confusion and, I think, difficulty in trying to figure out just where are those individuals that are committing these crimes coming from?" Fitzgerald told Newsmax. "It's not something that's located in individual precincts, but a lot of the officers told us was that there are roaming types of gangs that are committing a lot of these crimes."
Democrats on the committee have commented that the hearings are a "political stunt," said Fitzgerald, but "it's not true."
"What Chairman Jordan's been trying to do is set up a series of these types of hearings in the urban areas where we absolutely have seen this massive increase in crime," he added. "What we got from their neighbors is something that [the Democrats] probably should have heard because these are their constituents."
Meanwhile, the House will call its first witnesses in President Joe Biden's impeachment inquiry Thursday, and Fitzgerald said the information that has already been gathered points to a "path toward impeachment.
"Every day there's more information that's been compiled, most of it related again to bank records, and they're very close to having some information that I think is going to have to be disputed," said Fitzgerald.
And when the congressman was asked why some of Biden's family members have not yet been subpoenaed, he noted that Biden's brother James "is at the heart of a lot of what's been discovered."
"This is not something that just happened since the president came into office," said Fitzgerald. "This is stuff that goes back to his U.S. Senate days and James Biden is at the heart of it. So not only do I think Oversight is going to disclose some of that information, but what I think you're going to see is it was something that people were invited into the circle. Once they started receiving the dollars it was difficult for them to turn it off, and some of these people are probably going to be called in."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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