The House Democrats have their work cut out for them. It’s become inescapably, ineluctably clear: The Trump administration isn’t going to comply with, acquiesce in or submit to congressional requests. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin won’t turn over President Donald Trump’s tax returns. Attorney General William Barr won’t give Congress the unredacted Mueller report, contempt charge or no contempt charge. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross won’t testify any more about the census citizenship question. Former White House Counsel Don McGahn won’t produce, for now, either testimony or documents.
Trump himself, expansive as ever, has declared that his administration will resist “all” congressional subpoenas.
If a third party, like Deutsche Bank, wants to comply with a House subpoena, the Trumps will sue the bank.
No cooperation, nothing, nada.
So, what do Democrats do now?
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For one thing, a congressional contempt citation like the one the House Judiciary Committee issued for Barr on Wednesday is evanescent. The process is almost comically inefficient and requires the contempt citation to be eventually approved by the full House. The citation also expires at the end of the Congress that issued it. When a new Congress is seated, it can start again. In contrast, the executive branch marches on as an enterprise, legally speaking, from one presidency to the next. In a power struggle between the president and Congress, this is a big advantage for the executive.
Then, there’s the enforcement dilemma. Criminal enforcement of a congressional contempt citation falls to the Justice Department. If you’re asking the current Department of Justice to move against executive branch officials, good luck to you. (This goes double for Barr himself, who of course leads the Justice Department.)
What strategies have the best chance of eliciting or compelling the testimony and documents they need for oversight, impeachment or both?
The laws governing this executive-legislative dispute aren’t black-and-white —
Which means that the other side is always going to have a plausible argument to present to a court, which, in turn, means that no magic legal slam dunks are available.
The Democrats have to face it: No technical trick is going to do the job.
Their only route to success is via the muddy road laid out by master politician Abraham Lincoln:
“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.”
The most straightforward procedural suggestion for addressing executive branch noncooperation is to subpoena documents and testimony and, if they aren’t produced, hold the responsible individuals in contempt of Congress. This, it turns out, is not such a great idea.
In short, no clever technical trick will do the job. If Democrats try to fight the administration through procedural means alone, they’ll become mired in processes that will likely last well beyond the 2020 presidential election — which may be the Trump re-election. Instead, they have to do something harder: Mobilize public sentiment by refusing to “move on” from the Mueller report.
In judging the House Democrats’ options, it’s impossible not to think of Watergate, in which the House articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon were substantially similar to the charges against Trump today: financial corruption, obstruction of justice, resisting lawful congressional subpoenas.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ag-barr-s-contempt-charge-won-t-force-trump-give-ncna1003291