Power Of The Pest: How Jared Moskowitz Helped Wreck The Impeachment Inquiry

Every member of Congress knows that their five minutes of speaking time at committee hearings are an opportunity to make a memorable C-SPAN clip, but few have exploited the medium like Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.). 

At House Oversight Committee meetings, the freshman congressman has ignored the custom of posing questions to witnesses and gone straight after the committee’s chair, James Comer, mocking the Kentucky Republican’s efforts to impeach President Joe Biden. 

“There is no protocol or procedure on what you have to do in your five minutes,” Moskowitz told HuffPost. “You don’t have to ask questions. By the way, you don’t even have to talk on topic.”

In November, under attack from Moskowitz, Comer lost his cool, accusing the Democrat of spreading “bullshit” and looking like a Smurf. 

“Gargamel was angry today,” Moskowitz said on social media afterward, referring to the fictional sworn enemy of the cartoon Smurfs. 

The exchange was a notable example of what one Republican described as “failure theater” in the impeachment project, which has been doomed from the start thanks to the leftover material Republicans have been working with. Their “most corroborating” new evidence, for an already-debunked theory about Biden’s corruption, has turned out to have been made up. 

Moskowitz, a 43-year-old who wears sneakers with his suits, has been one of the most visible Democrats on the committee, along with fellow first-year Reps. Jasmine Crockett (Texas), Daniel Goldman (N.Y.) and Robert Garcia (Calif.). 

The committee’s most senior Democrat, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said Moskowitz has “mastered not only parliamentary rules but the fine art of debunking Russian propaganda while getting under Chairman Comer’s skin.”

A spokesperson for Comer declined to comment. 

“If Reps. Raskin and Moskowitz are proud of his immature behavior, then that says a lot about their level of seriousness,” said a GOP aide who was granted anonymity to be able to speak candidly. 

Moskowotz has a curious political origin story. He first performed on the national stage back when he worked for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, as director of the state’s emergency management department. In March 2020, Moskowitz launched a public relations attack against the multinational conglomerate 3M because it was selling protective masks to overseas buyers instead of to the Florida government as the COVID-19 pandemic spread. 

“Hi @3M. I’m your new Troll,” Moskowitz said on Twitter. “Please send us N95 masks directly to our hospitals, first responders and the state.”

The callout came in those bewildering early days of the pandemic, when people were hunkering down and hoarding supplies and policymakers collaborated on the government response. Moskowitz’s effort to secure masks for his people earned him a star turn on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” 

“The idea that an American company is selling masks away from our hospitals, away from our doctors, away from the real heroes on the front lines is something that will long be investigated after this,” Moskowitz told Carlson, blasting 3M for having made “a globalist decision and not put America first.”

Moskowitz grew up in Florida and attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the site of a horrific mass shooting on Feb. 14, 2018. As a member of the Florida Legislature at the time of the school massacre, Moskowitz helped draft a landmark gun control law setting up a red flag system and raising the state’s gun-buying age to 21. Working on the bill taught Moskowitz how to communicate in public and work with Republicans, he said, and the following year, DeSantis appointed him to run the state’s emergency management division. 

When he was offered the position, Moskowitz said, “I took it because I had dealt with the nation’s largest mass shooting at a high school in American history, and it felt like a ‘this was happening for a reason’ kind of deal.” 

In 2022, Moskowitz defeated Republican Joe Budd to replace the retiring Rep. Ted Deutch, a Democrat, to represent the safely Democratic and heavily Jewish 23rd Congressional District, which includes Boca Raton, Coral Springs and parts of Fort Lauderdale in South Florida. Moskowitz has been a reliable Democratic vote, though he was one of several Jewish Democrats to break with the party on an Israel funding bill that cut the Internal Revenue Service budget and on the censure of Rep. Rashida Tliab (D-Mich.) over allegedly antisemitic comments in criticizing Israel.  

Moskowitz said he wanted to join the oversight committee when he saw the Republican lineup, which included Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the most inflammatory demagogue in Congress. Greene, too, flouts conventions at hearings and has repeatedly displayed large photos of the president’s son apparently engaged in sex acts with prostitutes. 

While not explicitly saying he and Greene share a media strategy, Moskowitz said that, thanks to an attention economy pioneered by Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers, “every congressman’s like a mini PR company” and that being right isn’t good enough. 

“If you don’t make it entertaining, you don’t break through,” he…