All the president’s investigations

WASHINGTON—After the 2018 midterm elections handed Democrats control of the House of Representatives, President Donald Trump warned lawmakers in his State of the Union address last month that “if there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.”

But the applause had barely faded before House Democrats started flexing their oversight power. So far, nearly every House committee has opened, or plans to open, an investigation into some aspect of Trump’s world.

On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee sent document requests to 81 individuals and entities associated with the Trump White House, his campaign, and his business entities. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said the inquiry will focus on possible obstruction of justice, corruption, and abuse of power by Trump. He limited most of the requests to documents that had already been provided in other investigations.

Also on Monday, the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform committees requested details from the White House and the State Department about Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s private meetings and conversations. The Intelligence Committee is also investigating Trump’s foreign financial dealings, and the Oversight and Reform Committee is looking into how the White House grants security clearances.

House Democrats also have inquiries planned into Trump’s personal tax returns, businesses, and finances.

Then there’s special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and others, such as one by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, that have resulted in more than a dozen court cases like as the one against Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, who will be sentenced Thursday on corruption charges.

“It’s increasingly clear that … Donald Trump faces a legal assault unlike anything previously seen by any president,” Wired contributing editor Garrett M. Graff wrote.

The White House has so far denounced the investigations as fishing expeditions that won’t find any evidence the president committed crimes. In a statement Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders accused Democrats of opening the latest investigation “because they are terrified that their two-year false narrative of ‘Russia collusion’ is crumbling.”

On Tuesday, Trump called the flurry of congressional probes part of a campaign of presidential harassment. “The witch hunt continues,” he told reporters. “Instead of doing infrastructure, instead of doing healthcare, instead of doing so many things they should be doing, they want to play games.”

Trump said he plans to cooperate with Nadler’s investigation, but the White House has resisted others. White House counsel Pat Cipollone refused a request for information in the security clearance probe in a letter Tuesday, dubbing the request “unprecedented” and “intrusive.”

The administration has also focused on beefing up the White House counsel’s office to deal with the information requests. Cipollone hired an additional 17 attorneys after the midterm elections, Axios reported.

The investigation onslaught is part of a slow-bleed strategy by Democratic House committee heads to line up blockbuster hearings, such as that of former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen last week, and request documents that could be damaging to the president. They ultimately want to impeach Trump, but have so far tread carefully on the subject. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., announced Wednesday that she plans to introduce articles of impeachment in the upcoming weeks, but they are not likely to make it to the House floor anytime soon. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Democrats would wait to move on impeachment until the Mueller investigation concludes and they can examine the results.

“If the Democrats in Congress want to convince Republicans that there have been improprieties or criminal activities they need to build an airtight, overwhelming case,” Amy Black, a political science professor at Wheaton College, told me.

This week in Congress

In the House of Representatives:

In the Senate:

Account access

The top aide to freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., faces scrutiny for $885,000 in payments he received from his boss’ campaign and from political action committees, according to a complaint filed this week with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Saikat Chakrabarti, who now serves as Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional chief of staff, headed two PACs and a political consulting company called Brand New Congress that provided 2018 campaign services for Ocasio-Cortez and other liberal Democrats. The National Legal and Policy Center charges in its complaint that the setup served to cover up campaign expenditures.

FEC filings show the PACs and campaigns making contributions for “strategic services” to Chakrabarti’s company, but the complaint says the company should have given a more specific account of what campaign work it provided.

“In all my years of studying FEC reports, I’ve never seen a more ambitious operation to circumvent reporting requirements,” said Tom Anderson, director of the group’s Government Integrity Project. “Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has been quite vocal in condemning so-called dark money, but her own campaign went to great lengths to avoid the sunlight of disclosure.”

Ocasio-Cortez and Brand New Congress have denied any wrongdoing.

“There was no violation,” she told Fox News.

Chakrabarti tweeted he had been upfront about Brand New Congress and another organization he help found, Justice Democrats, from the beginning, pointing to an interview he gave in 2016 when starting the groups that he described as an effort to run congressional campaigns like a national presidential one.

Campaign finance expert Paul S. Ryan of the nonprofit group Common Cause told NBC News that there may have been a violation of FEC disclosure requirements, but that such a violation would likely be seen as relatively minor. —Anne K. Walters

2020 roster

The Democratic Party’s 2016 nominee for president, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, announced Monday she will not make a run for the White House in 2020. Speaking to a New York City television station, Clinton said she isn’t running but plans to “keep on working and speaking and standing up for what I believe.” But sources close to Clinton later told a New York Times reporter that she “wasn’t trying to be emphatic and close the door on running.”

In a less ambiguous announcement, Michael Bloomberg, billionaire and three-time mayor of New York City, said he is out of the running. “I am clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field,” he said on Sunday. Bloomberg said he will work instead on fighting climate change by encouraging the use of renewable energy sources. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio also announced this week they will not seek the Democratic nomination for president.

Meanwhile, an already crowded field of Democratic candidates continued to expand. On Friday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declared his intentions to join the 2020 race. In a video announcement, Inslee said he will focus his campaign on climate change, a move that has earned him the endorsement of celebrity scientist Bill Nye. John Hickenlooper, the two-time governor of Colorado, announced Monday that he will also run for president.

When those Democratic candidates gather on stages to debate during the primary season, their interactions will not air on Fox News. The Democratic National Committee said Wednesday it will bar Fox from hosting or broadcasting any of its debates. DNC Chairman Tom Perez said Fox News “is not in a position to host a fair and neutral debate,” citing a recent New Yorker report on the ties between the cable news channel and the Trump White House. Bill Sammon, managing editor of the Fox News Washington Bureau, said in a statement he hoped the DNC will reconsider. —H.P.

Exit interviews

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced Tuesday that he will resign in one month. Under his watch, the FDA cracked down on electronic cigarettes to curb teen vaping. Gottlieb also led a push to lower drug prices by reducing barriers to generic medications breaking into the market. It is unclear why Gottlieb is resigning, but he seems to be leaving on good terms. After Gottlieb’s announcement, President Donald Trump tweeted that he had done an “absolutely terrific job.”

In other White House personnel news, former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker resigned from the Justice Department on Saturday. Since the Senate confirmed William Barr to the position permanently last month, Whitaker had worked as a senior counselor in the department. Democrats fiercely criticized Whitaker, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, for refusing to recuse himself from overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He appeared before a House Judiciary Committee panel on Feb. 8 and denied interfering with the inquiry. —H.P.