Two people close to the Trump White House said White House aides are not dictating how the administration officials and department should respond nor are they calling for a blanket refusal to cooperate. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images white-house White House takes ‘haphazard’ approach to Dem oversight Some Cabinet secretaries are snubbing Congress while others are testifying — a sign Trump doesn’t have a serious plan for dealing with the coming onslaught of investigations.

President Donald Trump’s administration has known for months that House Democrats would be aggressive in wielding their oversight powers this year.

But its scattershot response to the first inquiries has left the distinct impression that the White House doesn’t have a serious plan for how to deal with the onslaught of investigations to come, according to multiple lawmakers and people close to the White House.


Democrats have wasted no time in demanding Cabinet secretaries testify about some of the most high-profile controversies that have plagued the Trump White House. But while some have readily agreed, others are refusing to comply.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, for instance, is in. HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are out.

The White House’s gambit has left some senior officials preparing expansive testimony, while others stare down a possible subpoena.

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"This White House is haphazard on everything, and their oversight strategy is no different," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee. "Let's just see if that's bravado or that's real, but in the end, we've got to do our job on oversight. We do have subpoena power. We will use it if we need to."

Requests from Capitol Hill go directly to individual departments or agencies, where they are reviewed both by the office’s general counsel and legislative teams, according to people familiar with the process. The responses are then generally reviewed by the counsel’s office and Cabinet Affairs offices at the White House, they said.

But two people close to the Trump White House said White House aides are not dictating how the administration officials and department should respond nor are they calling for a blanket refusal to cooperate.

The White House did not respond to questions about the process.

Even when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress, the White House was less than forthcoming with document requests, including some related to GOP investigations of the Justice Department and FBI.

“They didn’t really even use that for a warmup… when they were coming from sympathetic chairs,” said a senior Democratic aide, referencing the White House’s refusal to comply with the House Oversight Committee’s requests for documents related to former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

And there is little sympathy from the new majority.

“The stonewalling must end,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone said Tuesday, after Azar refused to testify about the administration’s policy splitting migrant children from their parents at the border.

“His denial to appear before the Committee in the coming weeks on the Family Separation Policy is unacceptable, and we are going to get him here at some point one way or another,” the New Jersey Democrat added in a statement.

Pallone’s comments come on the heels of a damning inspector general report that found that “thousands” more children were separated from their parents than the total that officials initially disclosed. That controversy drove news coverage for weeks last year amid congressional efforts to halt the so-called “zero tolerance” policy, which saw Azar’s department take custody of the children who had been separated from their parents.

Mnuchin is also balking at a Democratic request to come to Capitol Hill.

Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is pushing Mnuchin to testify before his panel about the ongoing partial government shutdown, which has left his department without funding. Mnuchin has refused to come before the committee, even though his schedule appears to have opened up now that he’s no longer attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Mnuchin, who would also likely face a deluge of questions about the department’s recent decision to lift sanctions on a billionaire Russian oligarch, is being hit by Democrats for refusing to testify despite having said in his confirmation hearing that he “looked forward” to coming to Congress, if asked.

The Democratic committee chairs can compel the secretaries’ testimony through the use of a subpoena, but lawmakers and aides have cautioned that such a measure would be a last resort.

“To me, subpoenaing is not something that should be done in itself — it should only be done when you are frustrated that you can’t get the information,” Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told POLITICO.

Engel’s committee is deliberating over whether to issue a subpoena for documents and other information related to Trump’s private meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in particular the leaders’ summit in Helsinki last year.

“Let’s see what we find. And that’s something I won’t take off the table, but I’m not pushing it as the first thing that we’re going to do,” Engel said of his subpoena power.

While Azar and Mnuchin are doing all they can to avoid Capitol Hill, Ross is a notable exception.

Ross agreed on Tuesday to appear voluntarily before the House Oversight Committee in March, where he’s expected to be grilled about his role in the administration’s push to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker is also slated to testify on Capitol Hill next month. The Department of Justice initially resisted a Whitaker appearance before the House Judiciary Committee but eventually agreed to appear after rising pressure from Chairman Jerry Nadler.

Whitaker is likely to face tough questions on his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, particularly his decision to not recuse himself despite having previously been a vocal critic of the Russia probe.

The bottom line, Democrats say, is that they don’t expect the White House is really prepared for the oversight gauntlet ahead of it.

“It is my belief,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), “that when they were executing a lot of these initiatives, they probably weren’t very careful.”

Heather Caygle contributed to this report.

