House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Friday called the policy “an attempted gag order” that undermined one of Congress’s core functions. “With this order, President Trump is making his disregard for transparency and his lack of respect for Congress’s oversight role crystal clear,” Pelosi said.

The White House on Friday denied a Politico report that it had explicitly instructed agencies to ignore records requests from Democrats. “The policy of the administration is to respond to all non-oversight inquiries, including the Senate’s inquiries for purposes of providing advice and consent on nominees, without regard to the political party of the requester,” a White House official wrote in an email on the condition of anonymity. “With regard to congressional oversight inquiries, the policy of the administration is to accommodate the requests of chairmen, regardless of their political party.” In practice, that means Democrats would have to win back control of either the House or Senate next year before the Trump administration feels compelled to respond to them. The policy encompasses rank-and-file Republicans as well, although junior members of the majority party frequently funnel their requests through chairmen to ensure a response.

Although denying that it was deliberately ignoring Democrats, the White House did acknowledge that it was taking a different approach to congressional oversight that did the Obama administration. “Unlike the prior administration that acted above the law, this administration will follow the Constitution and implement congressional statutes consistent with their plain meaning,”the official said.

The White House is basing its policy on a legal finding produced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel last month, which stated that committee chairmen are the only members of Congress that have a formal oversight role and therefore are the only lawmakers to which the executive branch has an obligation to respond.

“Individual members who have not been authorized to conduct oversight

are entitled to no more than ‘the voluntary cooperation of agency officials

or private persons,’” the OLC opinion stated. Under the opinion, rank-and-file members of Congress are entitled to no more of a response from the federal government than private citizens who seek information through the Freedom of Information Act:

Whether it is appropriate to respond to requests from individual members will depend on the circumstances. In general, agencies have provided information only when doing so would not be overly burdensome and would not interfere with their ability to respond in a timely manner to duly authorized oversight requests. In many

instances, such discretionary responses furnish the agency with an opportunity to correct misperceptions or inaccurate factual statements that are the basis for a request.

Democratic congressional aides said they had received sporadic replies in response to requests from departments including the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. But in most cases, the administration didn’t even acknowledge receiving their inquiries. “It’s 100 percent no response at all if we send it to the White House. The White House does not respond in any way,” said one senior aide who was not authorized to speak on the record.