A Cornell law professor encouraged the House to start arresting people close to President Trump to force the White House to comply with subpoenas.
Law professor Josh Chafetz wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on Thursday titled, “The House Can Play Hardball, Too. It Can Arrest Giuliani.” Chafetz said House Democrats should respond to a recent defiant letter by White House counsel Pat Cipollone by resorting to tactics that have not been used in generations.
The House should threaten to use “its sergeant-at-arms to arrest contemnors [that violate subpoenas] … especially when an individual, like Rudy Giuliani, is not an executive branch official,” Chafetz writes.
Cipollone’s letter, released Tuesday, informed Democratic leadership that the Trump administration would not comply with House subpoenas or allow another member of the executive branch to testify until GOP representatives are granted subpoena powers and a larger role in the process.
“Your unprecedented actions have left the president with no choice,” Cipollone said. “President Trump and his administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances.”
Arresting individuals for obstruction would allow Democrats to work around Department of Justice prosecutors, who rarely take action against administration officials in such cases, to enforce their subpoenas.
“The House arresting someone would be explosive and clearly should not be undertaken lightly. But the very explosiveness of it would be a way for the House to signal the seriousness of White House obstructionism to the public,” Chafetz writes. “Moreover, having arrest as an option of last resort might also make less extreme options more palatable.”
Chafetz also suggested attaching a rider to the next appropriations bill that would defund the White House counsel’s office, either triggering a shutdown or forcing the White House into compliance.
