PHILADELPHIA — Just because President Obama’s tenure is over, it doesn’t mean that the Trump administration can ignore outstanding requests from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said Wednesday.
Even before President Trump was sworn into office last week, Chaffetz gave White House Counsel Don McGahn “a long list of outstanding requests that we would be making of the administration to fulfill those requests,” Chaffetz said.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, also said on Wednesday that he has information requests pending and that he’s concerned that the Trump administration would leave them unanswered.
“Pres Trump. I gave all ur cabinet appointees files of Obama unanswered oversight letters fr [sic] me,” Grassley said on Twitter. “Will u get them answered”?
“I hope somebody in White House will explain to Pres Trump how important the oversight responsibility is to this senator,” Grassley tweeted earlier Wednesday.
“I have a very similar concern of the administration that we need them to respond,” Chaffetz said when asked about Grassley’s tweets. “Just because there’s a change in administration doesn’t mean the bureaucracy gets a pass on all the past requests, so those will be either reissued or encouraged to follow up on.”
Chaffetz said the continuance of government requires the next administration to pick up where the previous one left off.
“The government continues in perpetuity … we still fully expect them to comply,” he said.
Chaffetz also said that he is concerned that the Trump Organization may have violated its lease with the federal government when Trump hosted a party at Washington’s Trump International Hotel for his inauguration.
The hotel is in the Old Post Office, which is owned by the government. The General Services Administration manages the building, which it leased to Trump’s company. Under the terms of the lease, federal officials are barred from profiting from the hotel. But Trump has not divested himself of his company, which Democrats and watchdog groups say is a clear violation of the lease.
Chaffetz said he asked the GSA for an “unredacted” copy of the lease in early December.
“I still don’t have it,” he said. “It will be interesting to see what they produce and what their take on it is.” Whether Trump has violated the lease “is something that I am looking at,” he added.
