House Judiciary Committee Unveils Investigation into Threats Against the Rule of Law
Investigation will extend to allegations of corruption, obstruction, and abuses of power.
The U.S. House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) unveiled an investigation by the House Judiciary Committee into the alleged obstruction of justice, public corruption, and other abuses of power by President Trump, his associates, and members of his Administration on March 4, 2019. As a first step, the Committee has served document requests to 81 agencies, entities, and individuals believed to have information relevant to the investigation.
“Over the last several years, President Trump has evaded accountability for his near-daily attacks on our basic legal, ethical, and constitutional rules and norms,” said Chairman Jerrold Nadler. “Investigating these threats to the rule of law is an obligation of Congress and a core function of the House Judiciary Committee. We have seen the damage done to our democratic institutions in the two years that the Congress refused to conduct responsible oversight. Congress must provide a check on abuses of power. Equally, we must protect and respect the work of Special Counsel Mueller, but we cannot rely on others to do the investigative work for us. Our work is even more urgent after senior Justice Department officials have suggested that they may conceal the work of the Special Counsel’s investigation from the public.
“We have sent these document requests in order to begin building the public record. The Special Counsel’s office and the Southern District of New York are aware that we are taking these steps. We will act quickly to gather this information, assess the evidence, and follow the facts where they lead with full transparency with the American people. This is a critical time for our nation, and we have a responsibility to investigate these matters and hold hearings for the public to have all the facts. That is exactly what we intend to do.”
The Committee’s investigation will cover three main areas:
A list of individuals served with document requests today can be found here and below, with links to their respective letters:
For two years, in the absence of responsible oversight by the Republican Majority, House Judiciary Committee Democrats wrote over one hundred letters to the White House, the Administration, and House Republican Leadership documenting the failings of the Trump Administration and demanding accountability.
Throughout the 115th Congress, House Judiciary Committee Democrats remained committed to pursuing active oversight of the executive branch. In ordinary times, under the leadership of either party, the Committee would have focused its attention on election security, enforcement of federal ethics rules, breaches of the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, allegations of obstruction of justice, and preserving the rule of law, among other matters.
But these are not ordinary times. The Trump Administration appears to have failed the country on all of these fronts at the same time. Committee Democrats pursued meaningful oversight throughout these past two years by, among other things, writing oversight letters to the Administration and House leadership, requesting minority hearings, seeking to discharge important bills from Committee and the House floor, offering motions to move into executive session, holding and participating in forums, forcing votes on resolutions of inquiry, requesting and releasing reports, introducing oversight-related legislation, and filing lawsuits and amicus briefs.
The Committee published an interim report in April 2018, at which time the Democratic Members of the Committee had sent 64 letters to the Administrative and 39 letters to Republican Majority. This final report highlights more than 180 letters to the Administration during the 115th Congress regarding oversight of the President and federal agencies, and received responses to less than one-third of these requests. Furthermore, a majority of these responses were not substantive. The Members received no response to any of their correspondence to the Majority, and all resolutions of inquiry were rejected by a party-line vote in Committee. The silence speaks to an Administration run amok.