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The new chairman of the Chamber of Deputies' intelligence committee said this week that, when the new Congress convenes in January, Democrats are considering whether President Trump has abused his authority by taking unfavorable measures against him. Amazon retail giant and two of its bitter rivals: CNN and the Washington Post.
In an interview with "Axios on HBO", US government representative Adam Schiff said he and his colleagues would use subpoenas (supported by the legal threat of contempt of Congress). ), to conduct the Survey on the possible use by Trump of "state power tools to punish the press".
Specifically, Schiff said that Trump "secretly met the postmaster [general] with the aim of encouraging him to "raise the postal rates on Amazon", whose founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, also owns the Washington Post.
"It seems like an effort by the president to use the state's power tools to punish Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post," Schiff said in an interview.
The president signed a decree earlier this year demanding a review of what he called the "unsustainable financial path" of the US Postal Service (USPS). And he would have met with General Post, Megan Brennan, several times to push up the shipping rates paid by companies like Amazon, although there is no reason to believe it to get a political refund.
Trump has long mocked the political coverage of Post, the fierce and relentless critic of the White House, as a lobbying tool for Bezos. More recently, the White House has contradicted the newspaper's claims that it "manipulated" a video of CNN reporter Jim Acosta contacting a White House trainee at a news conference the week before. last, even as a Buzzfeed analysis had suggested that the changes in the video could have inadvertently resulted in the conversion of the video into a different file format.
But Trump is also feuded with Amazon throughout the year, claiming he was taking advantage of taxpayer funded shipping rates.
In March, he said in a series of tweets that the deal "scam" retailer online with the US postal service cost the agency "billions of dollars."
Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, speaks at the celebration of the milestones of the Economic Club of Washington in Washington.
(Associated Press)
While the US Postal Service has been losing money for 11 years, parcel delivery – which has been an asset to the service – is not the reason. Stimulated by e-commerce, the postal service saw double-digit revenue growth, but that was not enough to offset the costs of pensions and health care, as well as the decline in first-class letters and marketing mail.
Schiff also raised the possibility that the Trump government's opposition to AT & T's Time Warner takeover for US $ 85 billion was motivated by the president's spirited attitude towards CNN. whose parent company is Time Warner. Trump often asserts that CNN is broadcasting "false information" and that in doing so, it acts as "the enemy of the people".
"We do not know, for example, whether the effort to prevent the merger of CNN's parent company was a concern for the antitrust, or whether it was simply a matter of 39, an effort to punish CNN, "said Schiff, without providing evidence.
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"We have the responsibility to know it," said Schiff. With the new chairman of the House Watch Committee, Elijah Cummings, D-MD, and other great Democrats, Schiff will have the mandate to serve numerous subpoenas against the Trump administration.
But former GOP Judiciary Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who is now a contributor to Fox News, told Politico in October that Cummings and Schiff should not be realized.
"Yes [North Carolina Rep.] Mark Meadows and [Ohio Rep.] Jim Jordan can not get White House documents, I do not know why Elijah Cummings and Democrats think they'll do better, "said Chaffetz.
Yet the Democrats had already announced, before midterm elections last week, that they would conduct an aggressive investigation on the Trump administration if they took power in Congress. Political analysts tell Fox News that, if we rely on the White House with heavy demands for documents and subpoenas, they could turn against them, but there is no doubt that – made more viable by increased partisanship and relaxed Congress standards – would undermine objective political messages for the next two years.
House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif. Addresses a crowd of volunteers and supporters of the Democratic Party at an election night on election night at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. , Tuesday, November 6, 2018 in Washington. (AP Photo / Jacquelyn Martin)
"We are responsible," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who claims her role as Speaker of the House, said on Sunday at CBS's "Face the Nation." "We are not drawn randomly, we do not conduct any investigation for political purposes, but to seek the truth, so I think you could describe how the Democrats will go forward in this regard: we will be very strategic . "
But Pelosi has previously suggested that she would actually use the threat of subpoena for political purposes.
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"The power of summons is interesting, to use it or not to use it," Pelosi said at a conference in October, citing the power of House committees to summon individuals and organizations to testify or to provide documents under penalty of perjury. "It's an excellent arrow to have in your quiver in terms of trading on other topics." She added that she would use power in a "strategic" way (Trump outright termed Pelosi's plan "illegal".)
The approach of Pelosi would mark the continuation of a trend. The research conducted by Douglas Kriner, professor of political science at Cornell University, who co-authored the book "Investigate the President: Congressional Controls on Presidential Power", underscores the increasingly political nature of the House investigations.
"We reviewed all congressional investigations from 1898 to 2014, more than 11,900 days of investigative hearings," Kriner said. "What we have seen is that the divided government is one of the main drivers of investigations in the House. This is especially true during periods of intense partisan polarization. For example, between 1981 and 2014, the House held an average of 67 days of hearings a year divided government, compared with only 18 a year in a unified government. "
Kriner added that modern congressional probes seem to be[ing] the political damage on the White House, "rather than produce more substantial results." Investigations are less likely to trigger new legislation than in earlier, less polarized times, "Kriner told Fox News.
On election day, Pelosi vowed to "restore[e] Trump administration's balance of the Constitution "by improving transparency and accountability." But last week, Trump said he had no patience for this approach, which he described as costly madness.
"If Democrats think that they are going to waste taxpayers' money during our investigation in the House, we will also be forced to consider an investigation for all classified information leaks, and many more at the Senate level, two can play this game! " Trump tweeted.
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