ATLANTA — As Senate confirmation hearings get underway on Capitol Hill this week, the hearing for former Georgia Congressman Doug Collins will be delayed for at least a week.
Sen. Jerry Moran who is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs announced Monday that Collins' hearing is now tentatively set for Jan. 21 because of a delay in Collins’ FBI background check.
“Collins has submitted all his paperwork in a timely manner and has been transparent and forthcoming with the committee,” Moran said in a statement. “At this time, the FBI has not completed its customary background check of Congressman Collins. In accordance with long-standing practice, the committee should have an opportunity to review Congressman Collins’ FBI file before the confirmation hearing. I expect the FBI to complete its review quickly so that the committee can move forward with its role of evaluating the President’s nominee.”
Collins was elected to the Georgia State House in 2007 and served three two-year terms. He was a floor leader for Gov. Nathan Deal, a fellow northeast Georgian, for one of those terms, helping to broker a budget cut that kept Georgia’s lottery-funded HOPE Scholarship program going at a time when leaders feared it would go bankrupt and not be able to pay promised college tuition for all beneficiaries.
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Collins won a seat in Congress in 2012 representing northeast Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, one of the most Republican districts in the country. The former incumbent, Tom Graves, was drawn into a new northwest Georgia district when the state added a 14th congressional seat because of population growth.
Despite his right-wing positions, Collins faced serious primary challenges in 2016 from other Republicans who claimed he wasn’t conservative enough. While in Congress, Collins rose to vice chair of the House Republican Conference, the fifth-highest post in GOP leadership.
Collins acquired a national reputation while defending Trump as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee during the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into whether Russia improperly influenced Trump’s 2016 election victory.
Collins wrote a book about Trump’s first impeachment over allegations that he improperly withheld military aid from Ukraine in order to push Ukraine into announcing an investigation into Joe Biden, who went on to beat Trump in 2020. That book, “The Clock and the Calendar,” argued that Democrats were impeaching Trump to get revenge for him beating Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to prevent him from being reelected in 2020.
“From the very moment that the majority party in this House won, the inevitability that we would be here today was only a matter of what date they would schedule it. Nothing else,” Collins said on the House floor in 2019 when representatives were debating before voting to impeach Trump.
Collins is also a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve Command.
“Doug is a Veteran himself, who currently serves our Nation as a Chaplain in the United States Air Force Reserve Command, and fought for our Country in the Iraq War,” the president-elect wrote when announcing his choice for VA Secretary. “Doug will be a great advocate for our Active Duty Servicemembers, Veterans, and Military Families to ensure they have the support they need.”
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