President Donald Trump and his administration have engaged in so much corruption, Democrats are going to have to engage in blunt force tactics in order to hold them accountable, at least according to one expert.
"I don’t think voters are just going to want hearings for hearings’ sake," reported Slate's Dahlia Lithwick on Monday. "They don’t want subpoenas and “lawyer up” for subpoenas’ and lawyer up’s sake. The purpose of oversight generally is to expose corrupt behavior so that voters can then respond to it. The corrupt behavior is known, the voters responded to it. So now, what those oversight committees need to do is go get the money back. Because what we’ve witnessed over the last two years is just a splurge of corruption and a splurge of the president and his family and his allies enriching themselves at the expense of American taxpayers unlike anything we’ve seen in U.S. history, and the American taxpayers are entitled to get that money back."
Lithwick added, "The misguided Supreme Court decision in Trump v. U.S. basically shielded the president with this bizarre form of immunity that exists nowhere in the Constitution—meaning it’s very unlikely you’re going to see something like a Jack Smith–type criminal prosecution in the future. The president’s already said he’s going to pardon everybody on the way out the door. So let’s set criminal accountability aside for a minute. What pardons and criminal immunity cannot do is they cannot protect those ill-gotten gains from unjust enrichment claims brought by a future attorney general. They cannot protect ill-gotten gains from civil asset forfeiture claims brought by a future attorney general."
The respected journalist is not alone in calling for tough tactics by the newly-empowered congressional Democrats. Robert Reich, a liberal commentator who served as former President Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor, argued something similar for AlterNet in October.
"If Democrats regain control of Congress, they will need to focus not only on alleviating high prices but also on eliminating the causes of those high prices. It will be impossible to do the former without attacking the latter," Reich wrote.
He continued, "In addition to ending Trump’s war and his arbitrary tariffs, they must reform campaign financing, and help reduce the influence of big money in politics. One method would be to match public financing with small-dollar donations. They’ll also need to resurrect the systems of accountability Trump has dismantled —the independent civil service, independent inspectors general, the Office of Government Ethics, and the Federal Election Commission."
Reich went on, "Under Trump and his Republican enablers, the richest Americans and biggest corporations have made out like bandits. Average working Americans are paying dearly for what the bandits have stolen. The grift and the graft must end."
