Chris Wallace: 'Rich' for GOP to rail against Dem oversight after repeated Obama-era investigations
BY OWEN DAUGHERTY
Speaking during a pause in the at-times contentious hearings, Wallace said while there does not appear to be a “smoking gun” to indicate Trump is interfering in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Democrats have the right to press Whitaker.
“On the other hand, I have to say, I do find it kind of rich that Republicans are so outraged that there would be this kind of a hearing of the other party’s president and administration,” Wallace said. “You know, it’s not like Republicans sat on their hands when Barack Obama was president. They investigated Benghazi, they investigated ‘Fast and Furious,’ they investigated the IRS.”
Wallace then took a page out of Obama’s book, reiterating his famous line, “elections have consequences.”
“When Republicans have oversight of a branch of Congress or a house of Congress and they’re investigating a Democratic president, they’re going to make life difficult for them,” he said. “And now the Democrats are in control of the House and have control of these committees. That’s just the way it works.”
By Joshua Green
One reason Trump supporters such as Bannon fear Democratic oversight is that Republicans have spent years broadening and weaponizing the already formidable powers of the House majority party. For decades after Joe McCarthy’s Red Scare, the Oversight Committee was run as a gentlemanly partnership between the parties. To guard against abuse, the chairman typically had to gain the consent of the ranking member to issue a subpoena or else win a committee vote. Republicans changed this rule in 1997 to invest their Oversight chairman, Dan Burton of Indiana, with unilateral subpoena power, something he employed with astonishing zeal as he tried to take down President Bill Clinton. Burton issued 1,052 unilateral subpoenas during his five-year chairmanship, according to a calculation by the committee’s minority staff. In 2015, Republicans changed the rules again, expanding unilateral subpoena power to 14 committee chairmen to help them go after Barack Obama’s administration.
In April, Nadler put out a report listing all the areas in which he felt the Republican-led committee had turned “a blind eye to gross misconduct” and shirked its oversight duties. “In ordinary times, under the leadership of either party,” he wrote, “the Committee would have focused its attention on election security, enforcement of federal ethics rules, obvious breaches of the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, allegations of obstruction of justice, and preserving the independence of the Department of Justice, among other matters.”
To this list, committee Democrats have added concerns about nepotism and conflicts of interest involving senior administration officials, including Trump and his family members; whether the Justice Department has prioritized the prosecution of immigration offenses over other criminal cases; and examinations of the president’s physical and mental fitness.
Oversight isn’t just the key to holding Trump accountable. It’s also the mechanism by which Democrats will advance a legislative agenda that could come to fruition sooner than most people expect.
Here’s a list of all the House Benghazi investigations:
Investigation 1: The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Investigation 2: The House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Investigation 3: The House Committee on the Judiciary
Investigation 4: The House Committee on Armed Services
Investigation 5: The House Select Committee on Benghazi
GOP leader joins Trump in calling for end to Dem investigations
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he agrees with President Trump’s call to end Democrat-led investigations into the administration on Wednesday.
But of course Kevin McCarthy saw nothing excessive about supporting FIVE House Benghazi investigations.
McCarthy doesn’t lead House Republicans.
No, he leads the House Trump sycophants.