The co-equal legislative branch of our government is beginning to act as a co-equal and flex its oversight muscle. We begin today’s roundup with Jill Lawrence’s analysis of the House Judiciary Committee’s request for documents from dozens of people in and around Donald Trump’s orbit:
This isn't overkill, it's playing catch-up. What we’re seeing now is the oversight and scrutiny that should have started on Day One of this administration. It's also laying the foundation for impeachment. [...]
The list of alleged and potential misdeeds grows by the day. There are at least 17 law enforcement investigations that we know of into Trump’s administration, transition, campaign, inauguration, foundation and business, and that is on top of multiple new and ongoing Capitol Hill investigations. Cohen’s public and private testimony last week gave Congress many new avenues to follow up, including new leads on the Trump Tower Moscow project and possible insurance fraud by the Trump Organization. Cohen also said he was talking to federal prosecutors in New York about another investigation into Trump wrongdoing but couldn’t disclose what it was. This could make 18 law enforcement investigations. [...]
The onslaught of congressional investigations is a direct result of House Republicans having shirked their obligations for two years in the face of Trump's norm-shattering, possibly legally compromised presidency.
Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times points out the importance of televised hearings to create a narrative that weaves together an understandable story: [S]o far, neither Democrats nor prosecutors have woven the various threads of presidential wrongdoing into a coherent picture, showing how Trump’s shady business practices, opaque finances, vulnerability to blackmail, abuses of power and subservience to foreign autocrats all intersect. Now, however, Democrats have begun a full-spectrum public investigation of the president. [...]Given the polarization in our politics, there’s no reason to expect the coming hearings to change many minds. What they can do, potentially, is put the question of Trump’s criminality at the center of political life, just as the Watergate hearings did with Nixon. They can create a narrative that even a reality TV impresario can’t control.