The Republican Steering Committee may have finished populating all the standing House committees this week, but Speaker Mike Johnson still has some major decisions of his own to make, including filling three open seats on the Intelligence Committee.
Some names in the mix for the coveted committee slots include GOP Reps. Claudia Tenney (N.Y.) and Laurel Lee (Fla.), we’re told. Johnson is still weighing his picks and isn’t expected to make an official decision until the New Year.
Lee, a former federal prosecutor who was previously passed over for a spot on the panel, told us she’d be interested in serving on the committee but had no insight as to whether she’d make the cut. Tenney didn’t return a request for comment.
The secretive panel, ground zero for some significant partisan clashes in recent years, oversees the entire U.S. intelligence community. Its members receive some of the most sensitive information about the United States and its allies, so there’s always a lot of internal jockeying to get on the committee.
There are going to be three vacancies on the Intel panel because House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) are leaving Congress for Trump administration jobs, while Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) is retiring. With Stefanik’s departure, there would be no Republican women serving on the panel. Tenney, also a New Yorker like Stefanik, is seen as very likely to land a spot on the committee.
As speaker, Johnson gets to make unilateral decisions about who serves on the committee. But Johnson’s choices have also landed him in hot water in the past. Johnson came under scrutiny earlier this year for blindsiding House Intel Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) with two controversial picks for the panel: Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who had his phone confiscated by the FBI as part of the probe into the Jan. 6 insurrection, and Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a former White House doctor who was once the subject of a scathing inspector general report.
