The Daily - What Will Democrats Do With Their New Power?

Episode Date: January 2, 2019

Democrats have waited two years for a chance to investigate President Trump on their own terms. Starting tomorrow, they can. We look at how they plan to use — and not use — that power. Guest: Jason Zengerle, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily Watch. Today, Democrats have waited two years for a chance to investigate President Trump on their own terms. Starting tomorrow, they can. Jason Zengel on how they plan to use and not use that power. It's Wednesday, January 2nd.

Okay, here we go. Jason Zengler, lay out for me what we can expect to happen tomorrow, January 3rd. Jason Zengerle, lay out for me what we can expect to happen tomorrow, January 3rd. So at noon, Congress will convene, the new Congress, and 435 members of the House of Representatives will gather in the chamber for the first time. And, you know, it's a day of a lot of pomp and circumstance. The chaplain gives a prayer, the clerk leads the chamber in the Pledge of Allegiance, and then there's a roll call vote held to elect the new speaker, and that's going to be Nancy Pelosi.

And then after she's elected, she asks the members to raise their right hands, and some of them are holding, you know, religious books in their left hand, Bible, Torah, Koran. And she administers the oath of office. And, you know, for the Democrats in particular, this is going to be a really big day. You know, the first two years of the Trump administration, it was complete one-party rule. And Democrats were just completely powerless. And in taking back the House, for the first time, they actually have a toehold now.

And they can actually start to use that. I'm ready to get to work representing all of you in Washington, D.C. And what does that look like, given that this is still a divided government? They're not going to pass any legislation. I mean, the House might pass some bills, but they're going to die in the Senate. If by some miracle they make it through the Senate, Trump will veto them. But by having a majority in the House, they have one very important thing, and that's oversight power. Basically, Democrats can request information from the executive branch. And this is something they could do when they're in the

minority too, but the executive branch could ignore them because at the end of the day, Democrats had no way to force that information to be given to them. Now that they're in the majority, they have subpoena power. Every request they make is going to be backed up by that threat that if you don't give it to us, we can issue a subpoena. So they actually finally have some political and some legal leverage. And especially in a divided Congress, you're not going to get anything done legislatively. This is the biggest power the Democrats would have. So in a situation like this, oversight can become the biggest power of a party that controls just one chamber of Congress and not the presidency. How much was that built into the system? Was that an expectation of how Congress would work? No. Originally, there was some question

about whether Congress would even do oversight. I mean, it didn't really become an actual thing until 1791, when there was a military expedition in what's now Ohio. The army was routed by a group of Native American tribes, and it was such a debacle that Congress decided they wanted to investigate what happened. And George Washington, who was the president, was not initially enthusiastic about this. He didn't want to cooperate with an investigation. But then his cabinet met, including Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, who never agreed on anything. They concluded that this was proper for Congress to investigate. So

Washington agreed to cooperate. And that was the first congressional investigation into what was called the St. Clair Expedition. And it sounds like this creates a precedent for Congress being able to reach into the executive branch with questions and basically demand answers, kind of modern oversight. Yeah. So the St. Clair Expedition

establishes the role of congressional oversight. And then for the next 200 years, that's exactly what Congress does. Woodrow Wilson, while still president, had set aside several parcels of land as naval oil reserves. One such location. And, you know, there's some real successes. I mean, the Teapot Dome scandal. During the early years of his administration, Harding had turned over the administrating of that land to his Secretary of the Interior, Albert Bacon Fall. That's a Senate investigation that uncovers that.

The rumor had spread that Fall had secretly leased the government property to oil tycoon Harry Sinclair without putting it on the block for competitive bidding. Failed inquiries by the Senate had gone unanswered. But for every success, there's also a black mark, whether it's, you know, the House Un-American Affairs Committee or Joseph McCarthy. I think we've got a much more serious situation now

in communist infiltration of the CIA. It disturbs me beyond words. I mean, there are instances where Congress took oversight in a really negative direction and used it for really irresponsible ends. I want to make it clear that the United States Army does not coddle communists. This committee knows that. The American people know that.

Good evening, I'm Roger Mudd. And then finally, you have the Watergate investigation. Washington has been inundated by another massive set of Watergate transcripts. The stack of documents was distributed by the House Judiciary Committee yesterday to the news media for dissemination this evening. And that kind of ushers in a real sort of heyday for congressional oversight. Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

Vice President Ford will be sworn in as president at that hour in this office. After Watergate, people in Congress kind of recognized the potential to do real good, to really ferret out

misdeeds and misconduct and, you know, waste and fraud and abuse where they were able to not only uncover these episodes, but really produce, you know, genuine reform. And that era lasted for about 20 years or so. And then

Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House and things changed again. I pass this great gavel of our government with resignation, but with resolve, I hereby end 40 years of democratic rule of this House. I now have the high honor and distinct privilege to present to the House of Representatives our new Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia, Newt Gingrich. And how did things change under Speaker Gingrich? Gingrich saw the political power in it, and he weaponized the oversight process. Good afternoon. Bill Clinton was president, and Gingrich realized that the oversight function could be a way to gin up scandals against the Clinton administration.

To basically talk with them a little bit about the death of my friend of 42 years, Vince Foster. There was a suicide by a man named Vince Foster, who was an old law partner of Hillary Clinton's from Arkansas. He went into the White House to work in the White House counsel's office. Conspiracy theorists believed that maybe he had been murdered because he knew too much. The Clintons had had him killed. The FBI should have been able to find that bullet with all the people that were out there and all the expertise they had if the bullet was in the park. So why wasn't it found? One of the people who subscribed to that theory was an Indiana congressman, a Republican congressman named Dan Burton, who actually went into his backyard and conducted ballistic tests. He fired a gun at, there's some dispute about whether it was a watermelon or a cantaloupe or a pumpkin,

but some sort of spherical object he shot to try to establish that Foster had not killed himself, that he'd been murdered. Can you imagine a suicide note torn into 27 pieces without a fingerprint on it? You'd have to wear surgical gloves. Now, I went out to the site and walked all over that area. There's no sun that hits the place where they found his body. The sun couldn't have done that. Now, there was no dirt on his shoes. There was a little bit of mica, but there was no dirt on his shoes.

And it was a dry day, and I had dust all over my shoes. Even on a dry day, his shoes would have been stained by either grass or dirt or at least dust. Why was no dirt or dust or grass found on his shoes? Gingrich made Dan Burton the chair of the Oversight Committee. Right. Makes no sense. Burton issued over a thousand subpoenas in his six years as Oversight Chairman into everything, I mean, all the way down

to the White House Christmas card list. At the first whiff of scandal, he would start sending subpoenas and he would pursue these really kind of just laughable theories. And this does not seem to be what George Washington and the early leaders of the republic envisioned when it came to congressional oversight. No, you had a whole scandal operation in Congress and that was located in the Oversight Committee. This was a way to sort of, you know, create content and create damaging political information against your opponents. So with this power of oversight transformed under Gingrich, how was it used

by Congress going forward? Well, under Bush, when Democrats took back the House, they used oversight to investigate the outing of Valerie Plame. My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department. And the botched response to Hurricane Katrina. Today we begin two days of hearings on the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And then under President Obama, when Republicans took back the House, they were able to use the oversight function to conduct hearings and investigations into the Fast and Furious

gun scandal and IRS investigation of the Tea Party and, you know, finally, the big one, Benghazi. Very simple phone call to these individuals I think would have ascertained immediately that there was no protest. With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? The reason all of those names are familiar to you is in large part because these congressional oversight committees and investigations were able to expose them and bring them to the public's attention. And what role have these congressional investigative committees, these oversight committees, played under President Trump during his first two years in power? No role whatsoever. They just haven't done oversight. played under President Trump during his first two years in power?

No role whatsoever. They just haven't done oversight. Whenever a president is from your own party and you're in control in Congress, you're going to be a little bit more forgiving when it comes to oversight. But normally, you know, there'll be some big enough issues that you have to take a look at them. Under Trump, where there have obviously been a ton of issues that traditionally would warrant a look. Republicans in Congress for the first two years have been unusually uninterested in actually doing oversight. And to some degree, they're actually trying to inhibit other investigations. So rather than investigating whether Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. You had the House Intelligence Committee under Devin Nunes, who's a California Republican. They conducted an investigation into whether

the Department of Justice and the FBI were out to get Trump. Right. Just how badly were the feds out to get Donald Trump? And where does the House Intelligence Investigation stand now? Joining me to discuss that and more is the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Congressman Devin Nunes. All right, good evening, Congressman. There was really nothing to investigate there, but by going on Fox News and asking the question,

they were able to sow a lot of confusion and throw up a smokescreen. What we're really asking for, though, is for these 42 people to be interviewed in public. These 42 people really help us get to the bottom of was Trump really colluding with Russia or was this an was this an effort, orchestrated effort by the left working with the FBI and DOJ to frame the president and many people involved to dig up dirt to start this investigation? the president and many people involved to dig up dirt to start this investigation. And make people think that maybe there was a deep state conspiracy against Trump.

And how have Democrats responded to what the Republicans have done or not done in terms of congressional oversight under Trump? With great frustration because they really haven't been able to do anything. One committee alone, the House Oversight Committee, the top Democrat on that committee, Elijah Cummings, requested 64 subpoenas during the first years of the Trump administration. The Republicans didn't grant one of them. They've had no power. There are all these, you know, sort of issues and scandals and the like that are kind of screaming out for investigation. They've wanted to hold hearings. They've wanted to call in witnesses. They've wanted to send subpoenas, and they haven't been able to do any of it because Republicans won't let them. Until now. Yeah.

And almost all congratulations to those dynamic, diverse, incredible candidates who have taken back the House for the American people. Let us salute all of our candidates. Today is more than about Democrats and Republicans. It's about restoring the Constitution. We'll be right back. So what is the Democrats' plan now that they have this power to force the White House to answer them? Well, last September, a few months before the midterms, Pelosi invited the three top Democrats on the three most sort of important investigatory oversight committees, House Oversight, House Intelligence, and House Judiciary, to come to her office. Elijah Cummings, who's the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Jerry Nadler, who's the top Democrat on Judiciary, and then Adam Schiff, who's the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. And Pelosi told them all, we can't take the election for granted, we're not sure we're going to win, but we have to start planning like we are. And we have to start thinking about

how we're going to do oversight on this Trump administration. And what plan do they come up with? There are a couple of things that are really important. I think that Pelosi wanted to emphasize one, they have to choose their targets carefully. There's so much to investigate. One, they have to choose their targets carefully. There's so much to investigate. There's so many things that they could go after. And she wants them to, you know, prioritize what are the things we're going to go after first? I mean, what are the things that are going to have the biggest impact? We don't want to sort of chase small issues. We don't want to chase issues that are going to make it look like we have a personal vendetta against the president. You know, one thing that Democrats are worried about is overreach and giving Republicans the opportunity to portray them as being more interested in pursuing Trump than, say, pursuing truth or pursuing justice. And, you know, they look at what happened during the Gingrich years when Republicans did overreach against Bill Clinton and they did impeach him, and then they suffered at the ballot impeach him. And then they suffered at the ballot box for it. And two, they have to make sure that they're not fighting amongst

themselves to investigate Trump. She wants to make sure each of them kind of has a clear lane they're going to sort of stay in and, you know, priorities of what they were going to actually, you know, look into with their committees. Hello? Uh, Jason? Yeah. Hey, it's Adam Schiff. Hey, Congressman, how are you?

Good, how are you? I'm good. Thanks for taking the time. I really appreciate it. So at the Intelligence Committee, which Adam Schiff would be in charge of, they were going to try to get to the bottom of some of these Russia questions.

So what kind of stuff do you want to look at there? Well, at the end of the day, you know, what is most compromising potentially of our nation and our national security is if a hostile foreign power has leverage over the President of the United States. Either things that it appeared Mueller was not looking at and things that, you things that the Republicans just ignored when they were conducting the investigation for the first two years. Some really basic things.

You mentioned the blocked cell phone number, the blocked phone number before as a priority. Is that still the case? It certainly is. And that's another perfect illustration of the deficiencies in their report, but more than just the deficiencies in their whole approach. You know, one key question, of course, is what was the president's role in that meeting in Trump Tower? about a blocked phone number on Don Trump Jr.'s cell phone. When he was setting up the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians who were promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, he was calling over to Russia. In between those calls, he made a call to a blocked number. Some people think that the call he made was to his father, Donald Trump.

At the beginning of the investigation, we pivoted on a bipartisan basis to following the facts wherever they lead. Well, that phone call may lead to a place the Republicans didn't want to go, and so they were unwilling to get the facts wherever they lead. Well, that phone call may lead to a place the Republicans didn't want to go, and so they were unwilling to get the answer. The Republicans weren't interested in finding out who the call was. They didn't press Trump Jr. on the matter. They didn't ask Trump Jr.'s cell phone service provider. Schiff can do that. He's going to find out from the phone provider who the identity was behind that blocked number. Very simple to find out, and we do intend to find out.

They're going to do things as simple as releasing the transcripts of witness interviews from the Russia investigation. You know, Michael Cohen pled guilty to lying to Congress for something he said to the House Intelligence Committee. We can provide evidence to special counsel that we believe is relevant to his investigation, but also we can provide transcripts of witness interviews where we believe the witnesses may have committed perjury. I think a lot of Democrats on the committee think that other witnesses lied to them, and they want to get those transcripts over to Mueller so he can possibly go after some of those people. Is that a first day thing for you, getting those transcripts to him? Yes.

Okay, what about the chairman of the second committee? When I look at this march down the road of no accountability, okay, no accountability, that is actually, I think, taking away the pillars of our democracy. So Elijah Cummings is the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and they have the broadest jurisdiction of any committee in Congress. They have oversight over all government operations. They have oversight of the private sector, even. They investigated steroid abuse and baseball back in the early 2000s.

Right. Yeah, one of the things that we are definitely going to do is we are putting out letters asking them to preserve documents that we've requested. Yeah. Because we don't want them to go and suddenly get lost. So Cummings, you know, because his mandate is so broad, in some ways he has the greatest potential for overreach. So he's going to try to be very careful in terms of what he goes for first.

And the things that he wants to first investigate initially are questions that even Republicans wanted answers to during the first two years. You know, issues like the family separation policy, just getting the identities of all the children who were taken away from their families when they crossed the border, questions about personal email use by White House officials, questions about private aircraft travel by cabinet officials. These were all things that Republicans asked the Trump administration, asked the White House for documentation, information about, and the White House basically just ignored the request. They said, screw you. When they basically said, screw you, the administration,

they refused to back it up with a subpoena. Now, that did surprise me. And the Republicans didn't follow up. They never asked again. They didn't threaten a subpoena. Keep in mind, I was the ranking member on Benghazi. And I watched the way Gowdy came after folk and after Hillary Clinton.

I mean, subpoena after subpoena, because they were worried about two or three emails possibly being seen by somebody who should not have seen them. And then to do nothing here, that surprises me. So Cummings is going to ask those questions again. And this time, if he doesn't get an answer, he'll follow up and ultimately he'll issue subpoenas if he has to. But I think he's hoping that just the mere threat of that will compel the administration to respond this time. And what about the third committee? The third committee is the Judiciary Committee, and that's going to be Jerry Nadler. Hey, Congressman.

Hi, how are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. How are you? All righty. And Nadler and the Judiciary Committee, for one thing, they have oversight over the Justice Department. What's the situation with Whitaker now? Now that Barr has been nominated, do you still want to talk to Whitaker? Yes, we still want to talk to Whitaker. So the first thing Nadler wants to do is he wants to talk to the acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker and find out just how exactly he's overseeing the Mueller investigation. We still have all the problems of his bias, his prejudging the outcome of the investigation, his ethical violations, and the fact—

You know, I think there's a fear among Democrats that Whitaker has been put in that job to stymie the investigation, that he's Trump's hatchet man. So Nadler wants to bring him in and find out how he's overseeing the investigation, what have his communications been with the White House about the investigation, just really sort of basic things like that. Family separation, for instance. How can it be that the United States government is tearing babies out of the arms of their mothers? be that the United States government is tearing babies out of the arms of their mothers. That's kidnapping. That's one obvious area that we should have been looking into. You know, beyond Whitaker, there are a lot of things that have occurred over at the Justice Department over the last couple of years that Nadler wants to look into. He has oversight of

the Department of Homeland Security. He wants to ask them a lot of questions about the family separation policy. He wants to look into why the Justice Department isn't defending Obamacare in a lawsuit brought by Republican state attorney generals. And then, you know, finally, and this could be the biggest thing, if impeachment proceedings were launched against Trump, they would begin in the Judiciary Committee. And what has Nadler said about that? It's a very momentous step. There's real consequences. When Nadler was campaigning for the job of the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee about a year ago, he basically said, I would be the best Democrat to handle potential impeachment. Ever since he won the post, though, he's really tried to be

very cautious about whether Democrats would actually impeach Trump. But it's too early. It's too early. I mean, everything I've said about impeachment, which you may characterize as throwing cold water, I meant. But if necessary, we should do it. If necessary, we shouldn't. We don't know that yet. He's tried to sort of throw cold water on the idea, I think, a lot and really sort of set a very high bar for whether Democrats would actually begin impeachment proceedings. I mean, he's said even if Mueller or congressional Democrats find impeachable offenses, that Trump committed impeachable offenses, that doesn't necessarily mean they would actually want to start impeachment proceedings. You have a real question. You don't want to tear the country apart.

You don't want a situation where for the next 30 years, half the country is saying, we won the election, you stole it from us. Because that could really tear the country apart. Which means even if you are convinced that the president has done impeachable offenses, even if you're convinced that the impeachable offenses are very important to pose a real threat and you really should impeachable and so dangerous and wrong that when the evidence is all laid out, an appreciable fraction of the Trump voters would agree reluctantly that you had to do it.

Don't get this, you know, you stole the election after we won it. Don't get this, you know, you stole the election after we won it. Yeah. I wonder how much of the Democratic plan here is guided by how skillfully President Trump has already turned the investigations into him in his favor. I think that's a big part of it. And I think that's something that Democrats are still trying to figure out. And they actually, I don't think they have an answer. That's probably presidential harassment, and we know how to handle that. I think I handle that better than anybody. There's been no collusion. After two years, no collusion. There has been

collusion, but it's been by the Democrats, but there's been no collusion. The day after the election, Trump started to talk about how Democrats were going to investigate him and he called it presidential harassment. And I think there's a real eagerness on the part of Republicans to portray any attempt to conduct oversight by Democrats as, you know, politically motivated and, you know, as part of the witch hunt. And I think Democrats are, you know, understandably wary of playing into that. They realize that they really need to sort of pick their shots and they need to be judicious in how they take them. So basically, they're worried that it would backfire. Yes. I think Gingrich showed them the political potential of oversight, but at the same time, he showed them the political peril of what happens when you overstep. And I

think Democrats are very aware that they could wind up strengthening Trump in some way. But don't Democrats also run the risk in the other direction, which is that if they don't use this oversight sufficiently, that they will face tremendous blowback from the Democrats who just put them in power. Yes. And they're going to face pressure from members of Congress as well. They're going to be Democrats who are probably going to be frustrated with the committee chairman

about not being aggressive enough. It's a bit of a tightrope that they have to walk. So on this day, where so many Democratic voters are excited to see their party take over and to begin the oversight function into this presidency, it's very likely, it sounds like, that they will be quickly disappointed in one way or another by how carefully the Democratic Party pursues this responsibility and how deftly the president parries it back. Yeah, I don't know if they're going to be disappointed by how the Democratic Party pursues it. I mean, I think the Democrats are going to be careful, but they're not going to be timid. There's a lot of stuff they're going to investigate, and I think they're going to be

aggressive in how they go about it. I mean, even before tomorrow, even before they become the majority, they've started to send letters and put the Trump administration on notice that they're going to be pursuing these things. I think the greater sort of potential for disappointment is going to come from how Trump is potentially able to deflect and to defend himself. is potentially able to deflect and to defend himself. In the past, with these oversight investigations, there was an assumption that the facts would speak for themselves. If you produced the facts and you found evidence of misdeeds or corruption or waste, fraud, and abuse, those facts would be enough to convince the public that you found something. But we're in a different political and a different media environment now.

And I think there's a real fear, I think, on the part of Democrats that let's say we do turn up, you know, evidence of wrongdoing, you know, 40% of the public just might not believe it. What's going to happen when House Democrats actually do find, you know, smoking guns and whatnot, and the public just doesn't care. How do they convince the public that what they found is legitimate? I think that's where there's a real potential for disappointment. Jason, thank you very much. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Here's what else you need to know today. How far are you willing to go, Mr. President? When do you anticipate talks with Chuck and Nancy, as you say, sir? Well, I assume when they get back. I'm in Washington. I'm ready, willing, and able. I'm in the White House. I'm ready to go. They can come over right now. They could have come over any time. I spent Christmas in the White House. I spent New Year's Eve now in the White House. And, you know, I'm here. You know, I'm here. I'm ready to go. As the shutdown of the federal government enters its 12th day, President Trump is inviting congressional leaders from both parties to the White House today for a briefing on border security and the proposed border wall at the center of the shutdown.

Meanwhile, House Democrats say they plan to pass a series of bills that would reopen the government without funding the wall. Democrats say they will pass the bills tomorrow, shortly after new members are sworn in, and Democrats officially become the majority in the House. In the process, the Times reports, Democrats hope to force President Trump to negotiate or risk being blamed for a drawn-out shutdown. House Democrats take control this Thursday. They say they're going to reopen the government or try to do so.

Will Senate Republicans send any kind of bill to the president's desk that does not include border wall funding? The Senate, which remains under Republican control, is not expected to vote on the House bill, according to the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Richard Shelby. I think Senator McConnell, our leader, has already addressed that, that said that he would not even take up the bill until he found some compromise that the president would agree to sign. So we're going to be at an impasse. That would be probably an empty gesture, but that goes on in Washington every day.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.