White House tells top House Republicans to hold their horses on oversight requests

Letters obtained by The Independent show the White House is not honouring requests made while Republicans don’t have majority control of the House

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The White House has warned top Republicans who will chair the House Oversight and Judiciary committees that they will have to renew any requests for documents or other oversight requests once the GOP formally takes control of the chamber at the start of the 118th Congress next week.

The Independent obtained letters to Representatives James Comer and Jim Jordan — the incoming chairmen of both committees — from Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber, in which the White House lawyer said the flurry of demands for documents made by the GOP during the 117th Congress carry no legal or constitutional weight because of longstanding executive branch policy which requires such requests to come from the House majority.

Over the last few months, Mr Comer and Mr Jordan have issued a succession of letters to the White House and executive branch agencies demanding the retention of documents concerning a number of matters of interest to Republicans, including the Justice Department’s attempt to protect state and local school board officials from threats, the FBI’s handling of cases arising from the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the Justice Department’s probe into whether former president Donald Trump violated laws against mishandling national defence information, and the executive branch’s interactions with social media platforms.

Many of those often-repetitive letters formed the bulk of what Mr Jordan and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee characterised as a report on the alleged weaponisation of the Justice Department against Republicans, a matter Mr Jordan intends to focus on during his chairmanship.

Mr Comer, a Kentucky Republican, has said he will focus the Oversight Committee’s resources on investigating President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and his foreign business dealings, including materials found on a hard drive purportedly copied from a laptop once owned by the younger Mr Biden.

He has also stated his intention to investigate how and why social media companies pushed to limit distribution of an October 2020 New York Post story which focused on an alleged email from Hunter Biden to an executive at the Ukrainian gas company he once worked for as a board member, and has alleged that Mr Biden’s “personal participation in his family’s global business ventures ... has exposed the United States to national security risks that could be leveraged by our enemies to undermine the Office of the President”.

Biden administration officials have stated their intention to cooperate with Congressional oversight requests that are made in good faith and as part of the normal oversight process, a significant change from the Trump administration, which routinely disregarded any and all requests from the Democratic House majority and frequently described them as illegitimate.

Mr Sauber, the White House attorney, said the requests from Republicans during the current Congress have no weight because the House rules have “not delegated such authority to individual members of Congress who are not committee chairmen”.

“The requests in your letter, and the members’ requests to which you refer, were not made as part of the congressional oversight process in the 117th Congress to which the constitutional accommodation obligations apply,” he added.

Continuing, Mr Sauber said the Biden administration will “will review and respond” to requests made by the GOP majority after the 118th Congress convenes “in good faith, consistent with the needs and obligations of both branches” should the House committees “ issue similar or other requests”.

Mr Sauber’s letter appears to be a response to threats from Mr Jordan and Mr Comer to immediately begin issuing subpoenas for documents and testimony upon assuming the majority, based on the Biden administration’s failure to heed requests made while they were in the minority and had no authority to do so.

In a 6 December letter, Mr Comer demanded that the White House provide documents on the withdrawal from Afghanistan “no later than” 20 December, while Messrs Jordan and Comer demanded documents on the origins of Covid-19 “no later than” 27 December in a joint letter sent to the White House on 13 December.

The Biden administration’s stance on the Republicans’ requests made during the 117th Congress is similar to the policy of the Trump administration, which in June 2017 told agency heads to ignore requests made by Democrats, who were in the minority of both the House and Senate at the time. Administration officials have told The Independent the current policy is simply a restating of executive branch practice dating to the Reagan administration, citing a 1982 Office of Legal Counsel opinion.

In a statement, White House Counsel’s Office spokesperson Ian Sams told The Independent that “political stunts” like Messrs Jordan and Comer’s threats “suggest House Republicans might be spending more time thinking about how to get booked on Hannity than on preparing to work together to help the American people”.

“As we have over the past two years, we intend to work in good faith to provide appropriate information to Congress, but Americans have made clear they expect their leaders in Washington to work together on their top priorities, like lowering costs. That’s what the President will focus on, and we hope House Republicans join him,” he said.