President-elect Trump can expect “vigorous oversight” of his administration, according to a congressional Republican who promised that party loyalty wouldn’t insulate the Trump team from review.
“It’s not going to be pleasant sometimes,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told reporters on Monday. “I’m sure that some people will get frustrated. But my job in this role is not to protect and be a cheerleader for the president, it’s not.”
Congressional oversight traditionally falls out along party lines, most visibly during hearings, in which members of the party that holds the White House generally try to protect the administration from the barbs of the lawmakers who are out of power. Trump doesn’t have the typical relationship with Republicans, given his status as an outsider candidate (and former Democratic donor).
On the other hand, Trump is also popular in the congressional districts that elect some of the most conservative lawmakers to D.C. “This is a big test for me,” Chaffetz said. “When I ran for office in 2008, I was a regular critic of the fact that the Republicans got the House and Senate and the presidency and they blew it. And part of what they didn’t do is vigorous oversight, they sort of let off the gas peddle.”
The pressure to support Trump was difficult for Chaffetz to bear during the presidential election, when any criticism of the GOP standard-bearer was viewed as a betrayal by the Republican electorate. Chaffetz rescinded his endorsement of Trump after the now-infamous “Access Hollywood” video surfaced, in which Trump was overheard discussing his efforts to seduce a married woman and commenting that women let him grope them because he is a celebrity.
“I’m out,” Chaffetz said in October in response to that video. “I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president.” About three weeks later, with the race still surprisingly close, Chaffetz announced that he would vote for Trump after all.
Trump’s reliance on his family for government work is one of the most salient areas for oversight, as the president-elect announced Monday that his son-in-law will be a senior adviser to the president. “If you’re going to have a relative working in the White House, it’s going to draw some questions and it will from us as well,” Chaffetz said.
But there will be some benefits to having one party controlling the government. House Democrats have already requested several investigations of Trump, but Chaffetz said those letters were “silly,” given that Trump has yet to take office. And a Chaffetz ban on using WikiLeaks to spark congressional probes means that, in the House at least, Trump won’t have to worry about being undermined by Julian Assange’s group the way George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton were in recent years.
“I’ve given very explicit instructions to our staff, you do not go to WikiLeaks to go find information,” Chaffetz said.
