Republicans on Capitol Hill aren’t very interested in congressional oversight of the executive branch, which is a shame but not surprising, given that the president is from their party. What’s more surprising is that Democrats aren’t much interested in real oversight either.
Senate Democrats, whose collusion narrative has been exposed as delusional by special counsel Robert Mueller, spent Wednesday trying to inflict pain on Attorney General William Barr, laughably accusing him of a “cover-up.” They were incanting from a script cobbled together from a sloppy or tendentious reading of a Washington Post article, the timing of which appears calculated to reinforce the Democrats’ relentless campaign against the president. That article made public a letter in which Mueller criticized Barr’s synopsis of Mueller’s report.
Even though, among other clear efforts at transparency, Barr has published the letter, Democrats accuse him of a “cover-up.” One could argue that Barr’s presentation contained more spin than is ideal, but certainly no more than many other attorney generals have done in the past. But it is impossible to “cover-up” a document by publishing it. Notably, the “cover-up” attack was not about the Justice Department’s redactions.
The entire Wednesday hearing was a theater of the absurd. Presidential aspirant Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., exemplified her party’s preference for performance rather than oversight, as is her tendency.
She asked Barr impossibly vague questions, such as, “Has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested you open an investigation into anyone?” She also badgered him with “Yes or no!” demands. She also, amazingly, gave Barr a hard time for accepting Mueller’s presentation of his evidence.
This all garnered applause from the Left and its news media, which was the point, of course. Harris and Sen. Cory “Spartacus” Booker, D-N.J., used the hearing to run for president without paying for the ad time.
All this vacuity and grandstanding comes at the expense of real oversight.
Democrats spent two years clinging to the wrong end of the stick. They ached for the collusion conspiracy theory to be true. And many of them still won’t let it go because it gives them an excuse for losing to Trump in 2016.
But if they could only give up the vain effort to change the past and overturn an election that took place now 30 months ago, there are plenty of things they and their congressional GOP colleagues could and should be investigating.
Congressional investigations are most fitting when it comes to executive misdeeds, such as abuse of power, that are not illegal but are improper, and which Congress can correct.
For instance, Trump personally owns many hotels, resorts, and clubs. We know that foreign governments and U.S. government officials have spent a lot of money, surely many millions of dollars, at these hotels. One recent investigative article found a five-figure bar tab at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, which was picked up by the White House, meaning the taxpayers.
This transfer of money from taxpayers to Trump is improper. It is probably legal, however, and thus warrants congressional oversight and possibly a change in the law.
But these conflicts of interest don’t excite Democrats, who are still poring over the Steele dossier and dreaming of Watergate.
