Jake Greenberg: Chief counsel for investigations, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee

As the chief counsel for investigations at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Jake Greenberg has touched some of the most consequential congressional probes of the past several years.

Greenberg, 35, was drawn to Capitol Hill not just to escape Big Law but because he was enthused by what he saw as a budding political movement with President Trump’s first term — one challenged with the GOP’s loss of the House in 2019.

Though a fresh hire, he was thrust into responding to the Mueller report and, shortly after, impeachment.

More recently, Greenberg was a key figure in the GOP’s investigation into Biden family finances, crediting the focus on bank records in making “concrete, in a lot of ways, an investigation that could have just been an allegation throwing contest.”

Now, he’s helping lead an investigation into the mental acuity of former President Biden.

“I think what we are seeing is that Joe Biden had good days and he had bad days, and he had good moments and he had bad moments,” Greenberg said of the ongoing investigation.

“I think what we're looking for is an understanding of how often were there bad nights and bad moments? Because the presidency doesn't really exist at the behest of the president's ability to do the job.”

He doesn’t see the investigation as one aiming to diagnose, but rather to determine “what the fallout of that was and the potential risk to the nation.”

Greenberg did not always have Capitol Hill in mind.

He worked on a Wisconsin dairy farm before going to law school, something he described as a “character building” experience that gave him greater insight into a way of life conservatives often elevate but few understand.

“I wanted to just work a job, and understand what it's like to try to make rent and be exhausted at the end of the day and go to a bar at the end of the night and drink a beer, and just understand what it's like to be a regular American,” he said.

It was a formative time in several ways, exposing him to a segment of the country where Trump’s message would ultimately resonate in 2016 while also leaving him working for a “hard ass,” overall-wearing, brilliant farmer who happened to be a Democrat.

“Both sides make these tropes about each other,” Greenberg said. “I try not to buy into the caricatures of how we see each other around here.”