OPINION — When are members of Congress going to wake up and play their Constitutional role as an equal branch of government?
Neither the Democratic leadership in the House, nor the Republican leaders in the Senate are these days carrying out oversight on key national security issues involving the Executive Branch. And often when they try, the Trump administration has refused to cooperate.
Although the Constitution does not specifically mention congressional investigations, the Supreme Court years ago ruled that the Congress has the right to seek out information when writing legislation or determining whether laws are being obeyed or carried out.
As the official House of Representatives website points out, George Mason of Virginia at the Constitutional Convention said that Members of Congress “are not only Legislators but they possess inquisitorial powers. They must meet frequently to inspect the Conduct of the public offices.”
One article of the Democratic-led House impeachment of President Trump relates to obstruction of Congress’ investigation into his conduct related to Ukraine by not producing subpoenaed documents and blocking testimony from subpoenaed government officials, both former and current.
The House impeachment effort has become a completely partisan issue, but that should not stop all other attempts by House and Senate committees to undertake oversight of other significant governmental issues.
However, what has Congress done in the aftermath of President Trump’s undermining authority of top Defense Department civilian and military leadership by granting clemency to three service members accused of war crimes? Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy had argued against Trump’s actions saying they would create a bad example to other troops in the field, according to The New York Times. Former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, who resigned after being caught up in the case involving Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, told CBS News last November that Trump’s intervention sent the message “that you can get away with things.” Spencer added, “A war fighter is a profession of arms, and a profession of arms has standards that they have to be held to, and they hold themselves to."
Neither the Senate nor House Armed Services Committees have investigated or held hearings on Trump’s actions and their effects on the military services.
Other issues that need congressional oversight include the sending of some 15,000 additional American troops to the Middle East in the wake of Iran’s attack of Saudi oil facilities, Iran-supported militia rocket attacks against U.S. occupied facilities in Iraq, demonstrations against the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and the Trump-ordered, targeted U.S. killing in Iraq on January 3, of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
What about examining Trump’s retreat from Syria, while also getting a complete understanding of what’s going on after he left a small American military force to “seize the oil fields” in northern Syria. As Trump put it January 10, 0n Fox, “I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They're protecting the oil… Maybe we should take it, but we have the oil. Right now, the United States has the oil.”
What congressional committee is investigating Trump’s repeated statements about requiring countries to pay for American troops in their countries for our joint defense? He has claimed, for example, that he has gotten the Saudis to pay for the 3,000 U.S. troops sent after last September’s attack.
“Saudi Arabia is paying us for [our troops],” Trump said on January 11, during an interview on Fox News. He continued, “I said, listen, you’re a very rich country. You want more troops? I’m going to send them to you, but you’ve got to pay us. They’re paying us. They’ve already deposited $1 billion in the bank.”
Last Friday, Pentagon spokeswoman Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich said $500 million had been received “as the first contribution” from the Saudis “consistent with the President's guidance to increase partner burden-sharing.” She added, “the Department of Defense has engaged Saudi Arabia on sharing the cost of these deployments, which support regional security and dissuade hostility and aggression.”
In that same Fox News interview, Trump repeated a threat made to Iraq that the Baghdad regime should repay the U.S. for its investments in that country if American troops are forced to leave.
"I said, 'If we leave, you got to pay us,'" Trump said. "'If we leave ... you have to pay us for the money we put in.'" Asked how the U.S. would collect that money, Trump said, “Well, we have a lot of their money right now. We have a lot of their money. We have $35 billion of their money right now sitting in an account. And I think they’ll agree to pay. I think they’ll agree to pay. Otherwise, we’ll stay there."
Trump also claimed on Fox News that South Korea recently “gave us $500 million,” implying the South Koreans had never paid that much in the past for the 28,000 U.S. troops now stationed there to help prevent another Korean War. In fact, the South Koreans have been paying nearly $1 billion in past years, plus 90 percent of the $10 billion cost of moving, Camp Humphrey, the main U.S. base in South Korea.
A new test is coming up next month when the Intelligence Community is scheduled to deliver its annual Worldwide Threat Assessment to Congress. Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats delivered the last assessment on January 29, 2019 in a public hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, as directors have done since 2006.
This year, it appears the Trump administration wants to avoid a public hearing after last year, Coats and other intelligence officials made statements that conflicted with what President Trump had been saying on several foreign policy and national security issues.
“The intelligence community is reluctant to have an open hearing, something that we had done every year prior to the Trump administration, because they're worried about angering the president,” was how Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, described the situation on Sunday’s ABC News’ This Week. “Part of their job is to speak truth to power, and I worry that they're succumbing to the pressure of the administration,” Schiff added.
“The President was furious as he watched television headlines blare that the officials had contradicted him. The snippets of Coats saying that North Korea had ‘halted its provocative behavior related to its WMD program,’ but was unlikely to ‘completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities’ angered him,” CNN reported.
The Senate Intelligence Committee website, as of now, does not show any hearings scheduled for January or February 2020. Meanwhile, Schiff sent a letter on January 15, to acting-DNI Joseph Maguire inviting him and other intelligence community leaders to testify publicly on worldwide threats before his committee on February 12. Last year Schiff’s committee held a closed-door hearing on worldwide threats.
On Sunday, Schiff also complained that the National Security Agency was withholding “potentially relevant documents to our oversight responsibilities on Ukraine, but also withholding documents potentially relevant that the senators might want to see during the [impeachment] trial.”
Last week, the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees failed to have State Department witnesses appear at scheduled hearings on the implications of the Soleimani assassination and Iran.
On January 7, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, invited Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to appear before the panel on January 14, for a hearing entitled, “From Sanctions to the Soleimani Strike to Escalation: Evaluating the Administration’s Iran Policy.”
Two days later, the State Department told the committee Pompeo was taking an official trip to California and could not appear. He had a scheduled meeting in California that day with the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea.
Pompeo did, however, find time to speak Monday morning January 13, at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, on “The Restoration of Deterrence: The Iranian Example.” In his comments, he claimed through the Soleimani killing the Trump administration had established “real deterrence” against Iran following earlier Republican and Democratic policies that encouraged Tehran’s “malign activity.” Pompeo also spoke that day at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club before the Silicon Valley Leadership Group on “Technology and the China Security Challenge.”
Engel has now invited Pompeo to appear January 29, threatening a subpoena if the secretary again does not appear.
Also last Tuesday, the State Department postponed appearing at a closed TS/SCI [Top Secret/ Special Compartmented Information] hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where the topic was to be the U.S. relationship with Iran and authority for the use of force.
A House Armed Services Committee attempt to schedule a classified briefing last Thursday on Iran was also dropped when the only time members would be available conflicted with inter-agency meetings that Defense Undersecretary for Policy John Rood had to attend. It has been rescheduled for a later date.
The Republican-controlled Senate has done minimal oversight of the Trump administration, and the impeachment trial will tie it up for at least the next two or three weeks. That leaves the job to the Democratic-controlled House committees, which have been hampered not just by refusal of the White House and executive agencies to cooperate, but also by House Republican members who see any effort to investigate Trump policies as a partisan attack against the president.
This is not the way Congress, the legislative branch of government — equal to the executive and judiciary — was supposed to operate.
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