Government abuses were the scandals we targeted. Using the investigative tools of Congress to perform political opposition research on a single individual—even the president—is simply not appropriate. It is an abuse of power that undermines the authority and credibility of the entire legislative oversight process.
Republicans could have easily opened politically motivated investigations. There were calls to look into President Obama’s association with anti-Semitic radicals Louis Farrakhan and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former terrorist Bill Ayers, and other virulently anti-American characters. Some wanted an investigation into a sweetheart mortgage Obama was given by convicted felon and Obama campaign bundler Tony Rezko. Some wanted us to look into the mysterious disappearance of Obama’s college transcripts or even the legitimacy of his birth certificate!
None of these questions have anything to do with the purpose of oversight: crafting legislation and overseeing government expenditures. Such investigations would have been criticized as political stunts, and rightly so. My colleagues and I weren’t willing to misuse the committee resources for that purpose. Nor would our leadership have supported such a ploy. Yet that is exactly how the new batch of Democratic committee chairs have been approaching the awesome responsibility of government oversight.
At a time when the president’s opponents are hyperventilating over whether a nondisclosure payment qualifies as a campaign contribution, far too much of the investigatory apparatus of Congress has been converted to the unofficial opposition research arm of the Democratic National Committee. The Federal Election Commission might want to consider the value of that campaign contribution.
The prerogative to investigate the executive branch does not rest solely with Chairman Elijah Cummings and the House Oversight Committee. Each House and Senate committee has jurisdiction over specific parts of the government and can thus launch limited investigations that involve specific agencies within that committee’s jurisdiction. For Democrats, it’s all hands on deck to target the president of the United States.
Certainly the most high-profile theater of battle between House Democrats and the Trump administration leading up to the 2020 presidential election will be in the committee I once chaired. The committee, now named the House Oversight and Reform Committee, is ground zero for investigations of the Trump administration, although other committees are ramping up aggressive presidential investigations as well.
The House Oversight Committee has the broadest mandate of any House committee. It can look at any government agency or expenditure. But the real focus of Speaker Pelosi’s leadership team is on President Trump. Already, Chairman Cummings has launched probes targeting the president, looking into the activities of the president’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, investigating White House security clearances, and questioning White House dealings with Saudi Arabia. It remains to be seen what, if any, legislative goals they hope these investigations would achieve.
In the House Judiciary Committee, Democratic chairman Jerry Nadler of New York can go after anything involving federal law enforcement, including the DOJ, the courts, immigration, and even internet and intellectual property issues. He started with investigations of obstruction of justice by the president in a counterintelligence operation, violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause by the president, and what the committee is calling abuses of power—a reference to Trump’s insults against the media. But that was just the beginning.
Over in the House Intelligence Committee, Chairman Adam Schiff can investigate the most highly classified subjects involving counterterrorism, defense intelligence, and advanced research. He is using his authority to pursue a do-over of the Mueller investigation, going after President Trump for discredited connections with Russia, determining whether foreign actors have sought leverage over the president, and investigating obstruction of justice.
Schiff, who thought the investigation of the murder of four Americans in Benghazi was duplicative, “a colossal waste of time,” and “a tremendous red herring and a waste of taxpayer resources,” has had a change of heart about duplicative investigations now that President Trump is the target. He has hired his own experts to prosecute a case against President Trump. Former NBC News legal analyst Daniel Goldman serves as a senior advisor to the House Select Committee on Intelligence. His experience as an assistant United States attorney for the highly politicized Southern District of New York makes him a seasoned prosecutor. Instead of addressing foreign threats to the United States, Schiff seeks to second-guess the outcome of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which involved more than 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, 500 interviews, and more than $25 million in costs.
House Financial Services Committee chairman Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, is using her committee oversight of financial institutions to investigate President Trump’s charitable foundation. She is also attempting to compel financial institutions with which Trump does business to divulge information to the committee that regulates them.
In the House Ways and Means Committee, Democratic chairman Richard Neal of Massachusetts is probing the president’s tax returns, working with Waters to compel Capital One and other financial institutions to turn over documents. The House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Frank Pallone, Democrat of New Jersey, vowed “robust oversight of the Trump administration’s ongoing actions to sabotage our healthcare system, exacerbate climate change and weaken consumer protections.”
Not to be outdone, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman and New York Democrat Elliot Engel chose to eliminate the Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade Subcommittee and replace it with a new Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee that is investigating all things Trump. Who cares about terrorism or nuclear proliferation when you can be the seventh House committee to try to duplicate the Mueller investigation?
This highly coordinated and targeted effort to take down the sitting president sucks all the oxygen from the room, leaving no one to do the real work of congressional oversight. I fear that when oversight is seen as nothing more than a political operation, it loses its legitimacy and weakens our republic. All of this occurs even as Democrats promote ambitious plans to overhaul our society, damage what’s left of our free markets, and transform our government. Without congressional oversight, what’s to stop them?
How Oversight Should Work
Our sprawling federal bureaucracy and multitrillion-dollar budget need more oversight, not less. My belief in the importance of congressional oversight does not diminish when the tables turn and my party holds the presidency while the opposing party holds the House majority. The more government grows, the more oversight it requires.
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) is an independent executive branch agency that does a great job policing the various federal departments, but that role is different from the one Congress can play. OIG investigations, audits, and reviews are often limited in scope, authority, and impact. Congress has broader authority, it has subpoena power, and it has the media megaphone to call attention to things administrations or partisan media may prefer to bury.
I know the public gets frustrated that Congress cannot do more to expose and punish wrongdoing. That frustrated me as well. They don’t give members of Congress handcuffs, nor should they. As I outlined in my previous book, The Deep State, there are specific fixes we should implement to address the shortcomings of the oversight process. While Congress should never be given the power to prosecute lawbreaking, it does need the ability to enforce its access to documents and testimony. Nevertheless, the weaponization of the Department of Justice in the first two years of the Trump administration proves why oversight from outside the executive branch is such an important function of Congress.