The Oversight Wars Are Not Going Away
The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump has slouched to its preordained conclusion. But the confrontation between the president and the House of Representatives over the House’s oversight powers and the president’s authority to resist congressional demands for information and testimony is very much still ongoing.
Over the next few months, several of the skirmishes between Trump and the House are slated to come to a head. New ones may well develop. And all of them will tweak nerves left raw by the impeachment trial just completed, alongside a mounting presidential campaign in which Democratic candidates have very different postures toward Trump’s misdeeds.
The most immediate matter concerns one of the loose ends left over from the impeachment trial: what former National Security Adviser John Bolton knows. During the trial, a majority of senators voted against hearing what Bolton had to” subpoena Bolton following Trump’s acquittal, though House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has refused to commit one way or another, saying only that “.” Bolton slipped through the House’s grasp last year, but having since stated his willingness to testify before the Senate, he’s limited his options for defying a House subpoena.
