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White House Warns That Questions Could Have Questions of Their Own
· New York time
The White House is warning Democrats about aggressive investigations of the Trump administration as a new Democratic-led Congress prepares to take office. White House counsel Will Scharf said congressional subpoenas could lead to investigations by the executive branch, CBS News reported. The warning turns an expected oversight fight into an argument over the legitimacy of oversight itself. Congressional committees can request records and question officials about how an administration uses its authority. A change in control means those requests may come from lawmakers with very different priorities from the people being questioned. The administration has framed some possible Democratic conduct as crossing into criminality. That is its warning, not a finding that any future inquiry has broken the law. Democrats, meanwhile, will have to decide which subjects to pursue and how to make their investigations useful rather than merely loud. The White House has reason to contest inquiries it regards as improper, just as lawmakers have reason to scrutinize the executive branch. The coming dispute is likely to involve both the substance of particular requests and the authority to make them. Washington has found an efficient way to start the next Congress: before the first hearing, begin a second argument about whether the first hearing should exist.
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