Pro tip for House Dems on oversight: Do the work, avoid the court

Congressional oversight is about to explode prominently on the Washington stage. It comes at a time when another major norm in the nation’s capital is under siege – credibility. Republicans have left oversight credibility in tatters. Democrats have an obligation to restore it and succeed under it. To do so requires strategy and savvy. I will offer some.

These two years, credibility in Washington has been assailed by a caravan of carnival barkers and bloviators selling hogwash in lipstick. They’re headquartered in the White House, but they occupy strongholds on Capitol Hill, in the right-wing media echo-chamber, and now in the Justice Department.

It’s too early to tell if the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians, but I could make a darn good case that he’s colluded with Republicans in Congress to undermine credible oversight. A red line has to be drawn and fast.

As Democrats settle in behind the controls and levers of the House, here are some tips on what to look for and how to address what’s found – I offer them to help replenish the arsenal of credibility to vanquish the caravan.{mosads}

First and foremost, no talk of impeachment, please, without a factual predicate. There is none available, yet. In fact, no talk of anything until a predicate exists, including a request for Trump’s taxes.

Second: Avoid the court. Let me elaborate.

There has been talk by Dems of a “subpoena cannon,” for all of their pent-up frustrations of being stiff-armed by Republicans these two years. That’s an equally bad approach, as it could backfire.

There are two kinds of oversight required of this obstreperous administration. One is routine, in which standing committees are free to exercise their constitutional obligation to conduct serious oversight. These would be important issues like family separation at the border; Secretary Ryan Zinke’s ethical and legal lapses; the government’s response to Hurricane Maria; and, so on. The other is the high-stakes oversight required of existential matters to the White House. These include protecting the Mueller investigation; protecting Mueller himself; receiving all reports and documents from the investigation; receiving the Trump tax returns; making sure Mueller has the tax returns; any information involving money laundering by the Trump family and businesses; Trump emoluments; and so forth.

At the outset, the Democrats need to understand: a barrage of subpoenas is a two-edged sword. It can help you and kill you on the battle field. Too many subpoenas is the equivalent of the historical Republican approach of throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. There’s no credibility in that approach. It’s a recipe for turning an otherwise deserving target – the Trump administration and Trump himself – into victims. They could argue all day that such an onslaught is unfair, burdensome, paralyzing to running the country, etc.

Furthermore, if you need subpoenas in routine oversight, normally considered the last resort to obtaining information, you aren’t doing a very professional oversight job. Oversight requires gumshoe work, not fishing expeditions under subpoena. It’s akin to an intelligence operation: you get your best information from developing human sources (HUMINT) – better than from technical collection, such as SIGINT, or from online web sources. That’s because technology collection usually gives you WHAT is going on, while human sources can tell you WHY – the key to rooting out a problem and who caused it.

If Dem oversight staff cannot develop inside sources and get documents surreptitiously in this environment with all segments of government communities and workers under attack by Trump, they aren’t worth their salt, with all due respect. It would be exponentially faster than to wait on the administration’s timetable for complying with requests or subpoenas, or with challenging the responses in the courts.

For the uninitiated among oversight staff, seek guidance from historically reliable places. For instance, a group of non-profit oversight groups, headed by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), is holding a summit Friday that provides such training because they see a critical need. I have worked with this effort since 1982, and this would be the place to start.

One strategy has to encompass both types of oversight for this incoming Dem majority. High-stakes oversight is the priority. Routine takes a back-seat. House leadership needs to play a role, but a coordinating and quality control role, not a political one.{mossecondads}

Committees know their subjects better than leadership, and they are farther removed from politics than leadership, which is good. But leadership can advise a committee to not throw spaghetti, not over-reach with assumptions and conspiracies, and not issue subpoenas or do other high-profile activities if their credibility is in question, or if it would impair the body’s overall effort to play chess instead of rugby against Trump.

Recently, Nancy Pelosi was quoted that getting Trump’s tax returns would be easy. “That’s the easiest thing in the world,” she said. “That’s nothing.”

I have a prediction for Pelosi – you will have a colossal fight with the Treasury Department and the White House in getting those returns. That battle will go all the way to SCOTUS. It’ll be a battle royale between two titanic branches of government, with the third branch poised to side with the executive, thanks to the Kavanaugh confirmation.

The same battles will be fought with all of the existential issues mentioned above. All the way to SCOTUS, on a fast track. This is why grandstanding oversight gambits need to be avoided. No spaghetti, no “subpoena cannons,” no over-reaching or leaps-to-conclusions.  

Strictly fact-based gumshoeing with balanced judgment.

Keep routine oversight measured, and let high-stakes efforts proceed with chess-like maneuvering.  Dems need to show better than what Republicans have wrought, and bring back credibility as the dominating force in Washington governing.

Trump’s goal will be to run out the clock to 2020, and hope his caravan can escape to the county line before the credibility police catch him.

Dems need to be forewarned and prepare for war. What’s at stake is credibility in the governing of our country. Dems are obliged to make this work.

Kris Kolesnik is a 34-year veteran of federal government oversight. He spent 19 years as senior counselor and director of investigations for Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Kolesnik then became executive director of the National Whistleblower Center. Finally, he spent 10 years working with the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General as the associate inspector general for external affairs.