June 02, 2017 02:46 PM UTC

Trump Shuts Down Democratic Oversight Requests

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• by: Colorado Pols

Politico reporting on a new development out of Washington that could worsen already tense bipartisan relations in Congress: an order from the Trump administration directing executive branch departments and agencies to ignore requests from Democrats for oversight information:

The White House is telling federal agencies to blow off Democratic lawmakers’ oversight requests, as Republicans fear the information could be weaponized against President Donald Trump.

At meetings with top officials for various government departments this spring, Uttam Dhillon, a White House lawyer, told agencies not to cooperate with such requests from Democrats, according to Republican sources inside and outside the administration…

The declaration amounts to a new level of partisanship in Washington, where the president and his administration already feels besieged by media reports and attacks from Democrats. The idea, Republicans said, is to choke off the Democratic congressional minorities from gaining new information that could be used to attack the president.

…A White House spokeswoman said the policy of the administration is “to accommodate the requests of chairmen, regardless of their political party.” There are no Democratic chairmen, as Congress is controlled by Republicans. [Pols emphasis]

And before you can ask–no, Politico reports, President Barack Obama never did anything like this, in fact Obama issued orders requiring his administration to continue cooperating with oversight requests from Congress after Republicans retook control in 2010. Obviously, this is going to put the onus back on majority Republicans to exercise oversight over the Trump administration. But given the well-documented reluctance of most Republicans to hold the Trump administration accountable for fear of jeopardizing passage of the GOP’s ambitious agenda, this is obviously a very troubling development.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, you ask? Who will guard the guards? The answer, at least for now, is nobody.