A top Republican senator offered withering criticism of a recent legal opinion from the Justice Department, which concluded the Trump administration has no legal obligation to respond to requests for information made by individuals members of Congress, including ranking Democrats.
“Oversight brings transparency, and transparency brings accountability,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, wrote in a letter sent to President Trump Friday. “And, the opposite is true. Shutting down oversight requests doesn’t drain the swamp, Mr. President. It floods the swamp.”
The opinion cited by Mr. Grassley was issued last month by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and drew widespread rebuke from Democrats who said it would hamper Congress’ ability to conduct oversight.
“Individual members of Congress, including ranking minority members, do not have the authority to conduct oversight in the absence of a specific delegation by a full house, committee, or subcommittee,” read the opinion, written by Curtis Gannon, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. “They may request information from the Executive Branch, which may respond at its discretion, but such requests do not trigger any obligation to accommodate congressional needs and are not legally enforceable through a subpoena or contempt proceedings.”
Mr. Grassley asked Mr. Trump to rescind the opinion, which he said “falsely asserts that only requests from committees or their chairs are ’constitutionally authorized.’”
“This is nonsense,” he said.
The White House has reportedly instructed top officials in several federal agencies to ignore Democrats’ requests for information.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke out against the legal opinion last week, calling it an attempt by the president “to hide the truth from the American people.”
“With this order, President Trump is making his disregard for transparency and his lack of respect for Congress’s oversight role crystal clear,” Mrs. Pelosi said. “Since day one, the Administration has refused to respond to hundreds of requests from Democrats on a range of issues critical to the health and security of the American people.”
The legal opinion states that a letter or inquiry from members of Congress who do not chair relevant committees are “not properly considered an ’oversight’ request.” As a result, such inquiry “does not trigger any obligation to accommodate congressional needs and is not legally enforceable through a subpoena or contempt proceedings.”
Mr. Grassley said that while he experienced difficulty obtaining information from the Obama administration, acknowledging that officials in the executive branch “sometimes choose to respond only to the party in power at the moment,” he felt the legal opinion would only exacerbate political tensions and hamper transparency.
“I also know from long experience that, even in a highly charged political environment, most requests for information—by majority and minority members—are not ’partisan’ or at least not intended to be so,” Mr. Grassley said. “Many requests simply seek information to help inform Members as they perform their Constitutional duty to legislate and fix real problems for the American people.”</p>
• Andrea Noble can be reached at anoble@washingtontimes.com.
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