Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are poised to launch several investigations into the Trump administration should they take back control of the House on Election Day.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the top Democrat on the committee who would likely become the new committee chairman, is expected to pursue charges of waste, fraud, and abuse within the Trump administration. A Democratic aide on the committee said that could include the Trump administration’s security clearance policy, “multiple ethics scandals” involving senior administration officials, the administration’s U.S.-Mexico border policies, and the administration’s “troubling pattern of politically-motivated attacks on government watchdogs, ethics experts, law enforcement officials, and career government employees.”
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Democratic leaders of both the House Oversight and House Judiciary Committees could also go forward with dozens of subpoena requests and investigations that they say have been stifled by Republicans.
For the past few years, the two Republican-controlled committees have been focused on investigating the Justice Department and FBI’s actions as they investigated both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton before the 2016 presidential election. In July, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., argued that the committees should be focused on “other emergencies” facing the U.S.
“We ought to be holding hearings” on families separated at U.S.-Mexico border, Nadler said at the time. “It’s of more immediate concern than this hearing, certainly.”
A September press release from Democrats on the committee chided Republicans for blocking their requests to allow members “to offer, debate, and vote on subpoenas — bringing the total number of subpoena motions denied by Oversight Committee Republicans during Donald Trump’s presidency to 64.”
“The waste, fraud, and abuse is plain to see — and the Oversight Committee should be using its authority to fulfill its duty under the Constitution to act as an independent check on the executive branch. It is time to actually hold the Trump administration accountable to the American people,” Cummings said at the time.
Republicans have defended their oversight record, particularly into how the federal government’s investigation into Russia has gone. Since Trump took office in January 2017, four FBI officials, including Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, have been removed from their positions.
Elsewhere in the House, Rep. Adam Schiff is ready to restart the investigation into possible collusion between President Trump and Russia during the campaign. The California Democrat is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, which ended its investigation earlier this year saying no evidence was found the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians.
But Schiff told the Los Angeles Times on Monday that renewing the investigation is a top priority.
One Republican strategist said he expects Democrats will launch “so many investigations and hand out so many subpoenas that they could conceivably bring the government to a grinding halt.”
“Their goal is not to be a check on the Trump administration but to end the Trump administration,” Ford O’Connell told the Washington Examiner. “Their focus would likely be Trump’s personal finances and the personal finances of others in the White House and conflicts of interests. But this won’t be about transparency and good government, it’ll be about settling scores and getting even.”
