Susan Glasser at The New Yorker, has an interesting article on Rep. Eliot Engel of New York who is now the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Quite surprisingly, as least to me, Rep. Engel is going to turn what has traditionally been a policy shop into more of an investigatory committee.
As often happens when a new chairman takes over in Congress, Engel is reorganizing the subcommittees on Foreign Affairs. He’s eliminating the committee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade and replacing it with a committee that will devote all its time looking into Donald Trump. We don’t yet know who will chair this subcommittee, but we do have some idea of what will be on their agenda.
I asked for a list of what Engel proposed to investigate. It was long, although, he assured me, by no means exhaustive, since the subcommittee’s chair and membership have not yet been finalized. No matter who holds the gavel, the investigation is certain to start with the question of what, exactly, Trump agreed to at his private meeting with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, last summer. “It’s been many months since Helsinki, and we still don’t know what Putin and Trump talked about,” Engel said. He also pledged to look at “the business interests of the President” and the extent to which Trump’s financial dealings with places such as Russia and the Middle East have “affected what he’s done in foreign policy.”
…From there, the list of Foreign Affairs’ priorities includes North Korea and the matter of Trump’s falling “in love” with dictator Kim Jong Un; the killing of the Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the Trump family’s close ties with the Saudi crown prince, whose aides appear to have carried out his execution; and the wild gyrations in Trump’s policy toward the long-running civil war in Syria, where Trump’s abrupt order, in December, to immediately withdraw the two thousand U.S. forces supporting the anti-regime Kurdish fighters led to the resignation of the Defense Secretary, James Mattis.
“It’s the first time in American history that a Secretary of Defense resigned in protest,” Engel reminded me.
Chairman Engel is willing to fight other committees for the jurisdiction to investigate these matters. The traditional investigatory committees are Judiciary, Intelligence, and Oversight & Government Reform, although many committees do maintain oversight subcommittees. In some ways, the Intelligence Committee is better armed to look into foreign affairs because they and their staff have preexisting clearances and protocols for treating classified materials. To do this job correctly, Engel will need to transform the Foreign Affairs Committee into something it has has never been in the past.
If freshman Democrat Tom Malinowski of New Jersey is correct, Engel’s vision for the committee is very ambitious.
For Engel and the other newly empowered Democrats in the House of Representatives, it’s a moment to show whether they can do more than assert their relevance. Will all the investigations and subpoenas amount to more than political posturing against the President? “We’re the only check left,” Tom Malinowski, a newly sworn-in Democratic congressman from New Jersey, told me the other day. Malinowski, a former Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, hopes to land a seat on Engel’s Foreign Affairs Committee. He is bullish on the Democrats’ chance to create a sort of “alt-State Department” for the remainder of Trump’s term.
What’s clear is that Chairman Engel thinks our president is compromised by foreign powers, and not necessarily only Russia. He thinks it’s a crisis of the highest order. And he’s going to investigate.
C-SPAN is going to have some seriously high ratings this year.
“To do this job correctly, Engel will need to transform the Foreign Affairs Committee into something it has has never been in the past.”
And this isn’t grandstanding or opportunism on Engel’s part, it’s entirely justified, because Trump himself has made American foreign affairs “something it has never been in the past.”
The New Yorker article says that Engel will investigate “the extent to which Trump’s financial dealings” have influenced his foreign policy. “That will be a big departure for a committee that typically examines policies, not people.”
Since there are always people behind policies, they no doubt should have done more of this in this in the past. For example, wrt the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so many other things. But the prerequisites for any investigation are (a) that something has gone seriously wrong, and (b) that the critics have enough political muscle to mount an investigation. Those two conditions are not often met.
And the GOP is infamous for bogus investigations like Benghazi, where something did go wrong, yes, but they are more interested in establishing their fictional narrative than in finding the truth.
But Trump for the first time makes it IMPOSSIBLE to investigate foreign policy WITHOUT investigating the person, because his personal interests are such huge determinants of the policies, if you can even call them policies. So if this is a “big departure”, it’s because Trump himself is a big departure in foreign policy as in everything else.
You’re correct that people clearly shape the policies, especially the President (or virtual president in the case of Dick Cheney) and so should also be investigated where they break the law or govern corruptly. Unfortunately, when the GOP has the senate and the presidency all accountability goes right out the window, which is why Bush/Cheney could conspire to lie us into war in Iraq, prosecute the war in Afghanistan abysmally, not investigate what the secret energy talks Cheney convened right at the outset of the Bush administration were all about (hint: Iraq) and, of course, the corruption and dereliction of the Bush Administration on domestic policies.
As for Benghazi, that endless “investigation” was less about the narrative and much more an attempt to destroy Hillary Clinton as a viable candidate for president.
Hopefully, another Bronx-born and educated fighter. (Eastchester, Lehman College). And..the Rep. for my neighborhood.
HOORAY!!!
We shall see…
AG
If he is successful, we can thank you for electing him.
I would be interested to hear what an alt-State Department would look like if you ever find the time to flesh that out.
As our National Trumpalists (Trumper, McConnell, McCarthy, Roberts, etc) now look both to declare (and support) an openly bogus “national emergency” and implement means to divert (to the military) dedicated funds in order to intentionally harm Democratic constituencies, the long heralded Trumpian Civil War is finally upon us.
Hearings aren’t going to do a thing to the thought-processes of the now obviously fascistic 40+% of the citizenry and 95% of elected Repub officials–Lindsey G shows us we are quite beyond that stage–and Blue States and their citizens need to confront the reality of what is happening: illegitimate “conservative” government by illegitimate emergency decree(s). The corrupt CEOs of the complicit corporate media are most certainly not going to be allies in this Civil War, as the pronouncements of fascist Trumper, however mendacious, will always take teevee precedence over anything the House might attempt to do or what Dem Congressional leaders might say.
An actual strategy to counter the forces of a fascist executive branch is now necessary. The question is where it will come from, and who the Generals will be.
Does the RNC realize that the donald is about to spend every donated dollar on attys? Wonder how many will be staying at the Trump DC Hotel? Prediction…by March the RNC will be bankrupt.
The RNC would tell you that they know exactly what the All-Highest is doing.
Maybe DOJ funds can be justified to support the RNC in its struggle.
What’s clear is that Chairman Engel thinks our president is compromised by foreign powers, and not necessarily only Russia. He thinks it’s a crisis of the highest order. And he’s going to investigate.
What other countries, besides Russia, do you have in mind? I can’t believe Engel wants to open this can of worms. Because it has the potential to, uh, backfire.
Top of the list is Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey.
Considering how presidents of both parties kiss Saudi Arabia’s ass and we have nuclear missiles in Turkey, I don’t see how what Trump is doing is any different tnen in the past. Past presidents wouldn’t have been as crass as Trump re: Jamal Khashoggi’s death but the underlying relationship would remain the same whether the murder happened under Trump, Bush the Elder or pretty much any Democrat.