The clown show otherwise known as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) continued its spectacle this week as the Congressman posted an angry rant on social media against what he described as the “covert ops” team at the Postal Service. Investigators have long worked as part of the U.S. Postal Service’s operation, which ultimately isn’t that difficult to understand — the Postal Service is a nationally operating entity that undertakes work involving a variety of potentially high-value items in all sorts of situations. Gaetz was responding to reporting about Postal Service investigators’ work in connection to the Capitol riot, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) shamed him for his idiocy.
As Kinzinger pointedly put it:
‘You are a fear mongering clown. They don’t have “covert ops” they have investigators which they’ve had at least since the 60s when my uncle did that job. Of course you already know this’
You are a fear mongering clown. They don’t have “covert ops” they have investigators which they’ve had at least since the 60s when my uncle did that job. Of course you already know this https://t.co/aovhzLwpKs
— Adam Kinzinger (@AdamKinzinger) October 4, 2021
Gaetz has filed legislation with fellow far-right Republican Congressman Thomas Massie (Ky.) to eliminate the so-called covert ops team at the Postal Service. In the context of the January riot at the Capitol, the Postal Service office in question — known as the United States Postal Inspection Service’s Internet Covert Operations Program, or iCOP — “sent bulletins to law enforcement agencies around the country on how to view social media posts that had been deleted” and “also described its scrutiny of posts on the fringe social media network Wimkin,” as newly explained by POLITICO. Posts that the office “scrutinized” included threats against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
A spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service noted that “News report and social media listening activity helps protect the 644,000 men and women who work for the Postal Service by ensuring they are able to avoid potentially volatile situations while working to process and deliver the nation’s mail every day.”
