House Democrats will soon be burying Donald Trump and his Cabinet secretaries in subpoenas, and one top committee chairman admitted ‘it could be brutal.”
Now that they are in charge of the House, Democrats are planning to issue very large amounts of subpoenas to help their investigations into the president, his administration, his business and his campaign.
Some people believe that the subpoena onslaught could get confusing, but Democrats say they need to get the facts which have so far been buried by Trump and his GOP enablers in Congress.
The new House majority will be looking deeper into many issues surrounding acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, former Interior Department head Ryan Zinke, former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, for example.
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In addition, they will be obtaining much more information about the details of the president’s policies and business practices.
Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY), chairman of the House Budget Committee admitted that the process could get ugly and be difficult for Trump:
“I joked for a while — but it’s not funny anymore — I said we’re going to have to build an air traffic control tower to keep track of all the subpoenas flying from here to the White House. So yeah, it could be brutal.”
The Democrats believe that they must investigate what they believe are “gross abuses from agency heads.” Republicans have given Trump and his Cabinet officials a pass on unethical behavior since Trump became president. And last November’s elections put Democrats in charge of the House so that they can now hold the president and his administration accountable.
As House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said:
“Over the last two years President Trump set the tone from the top in his administration that behaving ethically and complying with the law is optional. We’re better than that.”
According to POLITICO:
“The first Cabinet official Cummings wants to talk to is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. His committee will press Ross over allegations he misled Congress about a decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census. Ross also has been dogged by ethical questions and reporting that exposed numerous conflicts of interests involving his personal financial interests.”
In addition, “As many as five House committees could take on DeVos over her rollback of for-profit college regulations, stalled student loan forgiveness processing and a rewrite of campus sexual assault policies.”
Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has accused DeVos of a “full-on attack on civil rights protections for students — particularly students of color, students with disabilities, transgender students, and survivors of sexual assault.” She’s also criticized the Trump administration’s moves to ease regulations on for-profit colleges, while Cummings is similarly looking at the collapse of a for-profit college chain.
Democrats will also be looking into:
- Trump’s tariff policies,
- his “zero tolerance” border policy which led to separation of children from their parents,
- his tax returns,
- Trump money laundering,
- his changes to environmental and other regulations,
- his moves to undermine the Affordable Care Act, and
- the behavior of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
In short, 2019 is starting off with a bang for Donald Trump as he faces an angry yet powerful group of Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives. He thought he could distract them from investigating him by extending the partial government shutdown, but that clearly won’t work. In fact, nothing Trump tries to do will work to deflect the probes into his administration and his criminal business empire.
For Donald Trump it is very clear that “Winter is Coming” in the form of a blizzard of subpoenas from Democrats in Congress.
I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.
