Remember when President Trump declared a national emergency a week before the midterm elections and sent more than 5,000 United States soldiers to the border with Mexico to fend off a bogus "invasion"?

Well, now that the election's over all that "invasion" talk has magically evaporated and the bored, demoralized troops are suddenly coming home—though many will probably still have to spend Thanksgiving carrying out the end stages of the absurdly named "Operation Faithful Patriot." Will anyone be held accountable for this military-abusing stunt?

I asked Seattle area Congressman Adam Smith, who's currently the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee and seems poised to become the committee's chair when Democrats take control of the chamber in January.

In a statement issued today, Smith blasted Trump's latest movement of US troops, saying:

The reports that President Trump is planning to withdraw some of the troops he sent to the border two weeks ago indicate just how empty, demagogic, and racially motivated this political stunt was. It appears to be an admission that there was no justification for the mission in the first place. It was not a respectful use of our military to take service members away from their duties and send them to the border as politicized props, and President Trump should not have done it.

So is Smith going to investigate this "no justification" deployment if he becomes Chair of the Armed Services Committee?

Smith didn't answer directly, but his staff pointed me toward comments he made to The Washington Post earlier this month.

“I don’t think we should let the president get away with this type of policy with no justification and no explanation for it," Smith told the newspaper.

That, it seems, would mean Smith will be using his power to dig into this "empty, demagogic, and racially motivated" use of American troops if he's running the House Armed Services committee next year.