Trump's Stonewalling Strategy, A Challenge for House Democrats

The Democratic Assistant also counted 35 times when the administration refused to answer or as requests for committee documents were slowed down.

The resistance strategy has angered the Democrats, who insist that the administration is obliged to respond to their demands.

"We believe that the administration has a constitutional and legal obligation to hand over all this material," said Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who sits on the justice committee and oversight committees. "It's in the pursuit of congressional control and oversight functions, and in order to function and pass laws we need to get information from the government, so we do not think the administration has the right to keep this information from us. . "

White House officials believe that there is little inconvenience to blocking congressional investigators, even if that translates into long legal battles with uncertain results. The blatant defiance of the Trump administration on all fronts could lead to years of court trials, battles that could last well beyond the duration of the Trump presidency, and allow investigations to be minimized or even forgotten.

A person involved in litigation involving subpoenas before Congress told CNN that both political parties were guilty.

"The administrations of both sides (…) are always interested in discussions, negotiations and further delays.The time is favorable," said the person. "No matter the political party, they are always willing to sit down and talk, because they could talk forever."

In recent history, information clashes between the executive and the Congress are rare but disordered. In a 24-hour news cycle where stories live and die by the minute, protracted legal battles may be lost in the reshuffle.

The search for documents related, for example, to the scandal of the gun march in the Obama era, known as Fast and Furious, is still ongoing, although the House's oversight committee has prosecuted these documents in August 2012 and that a judge ruled in January 2016 on the Ministry of Justice. had to publish thousands of pages of information.

Trump himself told confidentians that he thought that the proliferation of subpoenas would only help him politically, allowing him to portray the Democrats as uncontrollable in their attempt to overthrow him. He has already criticized the various investigations on Twitter and at campaign rallies and believes that it is a win-win problem that is apparent to his denigration of the investigation of the special advice.

In the spirit of Trump, according to the people who have spoken to him, the Democrats have been seeking taxes for years without success and the problem has not caused him political prejudice among his grassroots voters. Although he acknowledged that Democrats have recently become powerful in their attempts to obtain documents, he has expressed confidence in his own legal authority to refuse his tax returns to legislators.

At worst, Trump said, the fighting is likely to last longer than the remaining two years of this congressional session, saying the 2020 elections may allow a reset, making the demands of the investigation irrelevant.

"If the president claims the privilege of the executive, the legal battle could be very long," said Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason University and author of "Executive Privilege: Presidential Power," secret and responsibility ".

"Usually, these issues are settled without a legal battle through a process of accommodation between the White House and Congress," Rozell said. "But in this case, it is quite possible that the two branches will come face to face, each party refusing to give an inch.This is where a legal battle may be necessary, although this is a regrettable circumstance when Political branches can not settle a dispute short of going to court ".

The processing of congressional requests and an expected increase in the number of subpoenas already consumes a lot of time and resources at the White House. This was the expected result of the mid-term elections in November, during which Democrats took the majority of votes in the House of Representatives.

Pat Cipollone, Trump's White House lawyer, oversaw the hiring of new lawyers to process applications after the lawyer's office saw its staff shrink in the early years of government Trump. The White House announced last week five new additions to the council office. Nearly 20 new lawyers were recruited early in the year as Democrats began formulating their investigative plans.

Trump's private team of lawyers also dealt with congressional requests for information about the president's personal finances. The most recent example is that of Monday, when Trump's personal attorney wrote to the US Treasury to tell him that the agency should reject a formal Congressional petition regarding Trump's tax returns. .

For many members of staff working on prestige, the preparation of the fighting in court is fully taken into account. For months, assistants to the House Committee on Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal consulted with counsel and House experts on the best way to apply for Trump's personal and professional tax return. Under pressure from the Liberals to act more quickly, Neal deliberated by stating publicly that he would not rush into a process that would likely end up in court.

"We wanted to make sure that the file we developed was a critically reviewed case for the courts," Neal said.

But Democrats may also be forced to make difficult choices. They searched for documents on everything related to the president's finances, his immigration policy, questions about whether he had obstructed justice or whether his campaign had been influenced by foreign governments. In some cases, committee chairs went so far as to issue subpoenas for certain information, as they did this week in search of financial documents related to the president.

But even in this case, the implementation of subpoenas may require further legal action, time and money that could distract attention from the other priorities of the Democrats, especially the and the holding of the House of Representatives in the 2020 elections.