During Kenneth Starr’s investigation into President Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Brett M. Kavanaugh and William P. Barr argued that waiting on the counsel’s report would be an abdication of Congress’s constitutional duty. Both men unequivocally supported rigorous congressional oversight apart from — or perhaps even instead of — a counsel investigation. But with Trump in office, Republicans have spent two years defying that very argument.
“When Congress learns of a serious allegation against a president, it must quickly determine whether the president is to remain in office,” Kavanaugh wrote for
The Washington Postin a piece that ran Feb. 26, 1999, under the headline “First Let Congress Do Its Job.”
Kavanaugh, then a top lawyer for the Starr investigation,
was averse tothe idea of a badly behaved president and the independent counsel statute. For Congress to sit idly by and defer to the counsel’s investigation, he said, is “not what the Constitution contemplated.”
“There simply was no need for this mess to have occupied the country for 13 months,” Kavanaugh suggested, because Congress could have “gotten to the truth” much faster.
The FixAnalysis
Brett Kavanaugh said Congress should hold presidents accountable. William Barr agreed.
By
Deanna Paul
March 9 at 8:13 PM
Since taking control of the House, Democrats have
launched wide-ranging investigationsinto President Trump, his campaign, his administration and his family business operations. Republicans in Congress have criticized the moves as part of an effort to disrupt Trump’s presidency and argued that they
cover the same ground as special counselRobert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe. But by conducting their own investigations, Democrats are taking the exact course of action two of Trump’s most prominent nominees previously proposed.
During Kenneth Starr’s investigation into President Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Brett M. Kavanaugh and William P. Barr argued that waiting on the counsel’s report would be an abdication of Congress’s constitutional duty. Both men unequivocally supported rigorous congressional oversight apart from — or perhaps even instead of — a counsel investigation. But with Trump in office, Republicans have spent two years defying that very argument.
Some of the Trump administration investigations Democrats plan to pursue
House Democrats plan to pursue a series of investigations into the Trump administration in the 116th Congress.(JM Rieger/The Washington Post)
“When Congress learns of a serious allegation against a president, it must quickly determine whether the president is to remain in office,” Kavanaugh wrote for
The Washington Postin a piece that ran Feb. 26, 1999, under the headline “First Let Congress Do Its Job.”
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Kavanaugh, then a top lawyer for the Starr investigation,
was averse tothe idea of a badly behaved president and the independent counsel statute. For Congress to sit idly by and defer to the counsel’s investigation, he said, is “not what the Constitution contemplated.”
“There simply was no need for this mess to have occupied the country for 13 months,” Kavanaugh suggested, because Congress could have “gotten to the truth” much faster.
[First let Congress do its job]
In a
March 1998 articlepublished by the conservative magazine American Spectator, Kavanaugh wrote that because “Congress is the entity constitutionally assigned to determine whether the president should remain in office, it follows that a congressional inquiry should take precedence over a criminal investigation of the president.”
He added, “It is more important for Congress to determine whether the president has committed impeachable offenses or otherwise acted in a manner inconsistent with the presidency than for any individual to be criminally prosecuted and sentenced to a few years in prison.”
Similarly, Barr, who was recently confirmed as U.S. attorney general, once expressed dissatisfaction with Congress’s shrinking role in presidential investigations.
“I would like to see the watchdog institutions we have in society step up and perform the primary role they are supposed to, not let the independent counsel handle everything,” he said during a
1999 congressional hearing. “And then continue vigorous oversight both by Congress and the press.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...e-william-barr-agreed/?utm_term=.dee6409ce195
