The House Oversight Committee voted on Wednesday to subpoena Rolling Stone contributing editor Seth Harp after he shared a picture and biography of a Delta Force commander that he said played a central role in the recent U.S. military operation in Venezuela.
Harp posted the commander’s biography — which included the officer’s first and last name and the fact he had a wife and five daughters —  to X Sunday. The journalist later claimed X locked his account until he deleted the post, according to a Monday statement he posted on the social media platform.
The Daily Caller News Foundation is withholding the commander’s name and the contents of his biography which Harp had posted.
Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who sits on the Oversight Committee, put forth the motion to subpoena the journalist, calling Harp’s move “doxxing,” and saying that he “leaked classified information.”
“I have made a motion to subpoena Seth Harp, which passed unanimously with bipartisan support in committee, to face accountability for leaking classified intelligence related to Operation Absolute Resolve, including the doxxing of a U.S. Delta Force commander,” Luna said in a statement to the DCNF. “That conduct is not protected journalism. It was reckless, dangerous, and put American lives at risk. The First Amendment does not give anyone a license to expose elite military personnel, compromise operations, or assist our adversaries under the guise of reporting. Congress has a constitutional duty to investigate when national security is endangered, and no one is above oversight.”
“Seth Harp has also been referred to the Department of Justice for his actions, and I look forward to the findings of the investigation,” Luna’s statement added.
“Putting a service member and their family in danger is dishonorable and feckless,” Luna wrote on X after the vote, which had strong bipartisan support, including from the committee’s top Democrat, California Rep. Robert Garcia, multiple outlets reported.
In his post, Harp referred to the deposed, captured and indicted Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro as “the rightful president” of the South American country, and said that President Donald Trump had “kidnapped” the despot. The U.S. and the vast majority of its allies considered Maduro an illegitimate leader prior to his removal.
The identities of Special Operations forces, including Delta Force, are heavily protected, and usually classified by the military, according to The Washington Post (WaPo).
“The First Amendment does not give anyone a license to expose elite military personnel, compromise operations, or assist our adversaries under the guise of reporting,” the congresswoman said Thursday in a statement to WaPo. “Congress has a constitutional duty to investigate when national security is endangered, and no one is above oversight.”
Garcia supported Luna’s motion after he added an amendment to also subpoena to co-executors of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, Richard Kahn and Darren Indyke. Garcia has led House Democrats in obtaining records directly from the deceased child sex trafficker’s estate rather than the Department of Justice (DOJ), which has failed to meet the deadline imposed by Congress to release all the Epstein files.
“In no way did I ‘doxx’ the officer,” Harp wrote in his Jan. 5 statement posted to social media. “I did not post any personally identifying information about him, such as his birthday, social security number, home address, phone number, email address, the names of his family members, or pictures of his house.”
However, the bio Harp posted to X stated the first name of the commander’s wife.
“Nothing about this should distract from the larger Issue: Delta Force, acting on President Trump’s unlawful orders … invaded Venezuela, killed scores of Venezuelans who posed no threat to the United States, and kidnapped the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, as well as his wife,” Harp added in his statement.
“The idea of a reporter ‘leaking classified intel’ is a contradiction in terms,” Harp told WaPo on Thursday. “The First Amendment and ironclad Supreme Court precedent permit journalists to publish classified documents. We don’t work for the government and it’s our job to expose secrets, not protect them for the convenience of high-ranking officials.”
“It’s not ‘doxing’ to point out which high-ranking military officials are involved in breaking news events. That’s information that the public has a right to know,” he added.
In a Jan. 3 X post, Harp referred to Delta Force, an elite special operations force of the Army, as “an organization filled with cokeheads and pervaded by drug trafficking.”
Harp served in the Iraq War as a U.S. Army Reservist and was assistant attorney general in Texas prior to pursuing a journalism career, according to his biography on left-wing think tank New America’s website.
Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the chair of the Oversight Committee, did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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