“One of the most important tools that Congress has to hold the executive branch accountable is the power of the purse,” said House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) in a statement. “As we write appropriations bills, we will exercise that power to ensure that the Trump administration respects the critical oversight role of the legislative branch.”

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The possibility of depriving federal agencies of money for certain priorities or management offices could escalate the standoff between the executive and legislative branches — or, Democrats hope, speed along their investigations.

It is still unclear which departments could feel the squeeze. But in the coming weeks, as House Democratic appropriators write bills funding agencies and departments across the federal government, they will be working with chairmen to find what one official called “pressure points” to force compliance, according to multiple senior House Democrats familiar with the strategy. The Democrats spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the strategy.

House Democrats say they have several dozen outstanding document requests or inquiries, on issues ranging from Trump’s family separation policy for immigrants at the border to personnel changes at the Education Department to how the president’s son-in-law, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, who received a top-secret security clearance despite intelligence officials’ concerns.

The use of such a strategy comes as House Democrats have pushed for Attorney General William P. Barr to release special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on his investigation into Russia’s interference of the U.S. election.

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Trump and congressional Republicans have pointed to the four-page summary of the findings to argue the president has been exonerated. Mueller did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but failed to come to a decision about whether Trump obstructed justice, according to Barr’s summary.

Democrats still believe there is damaging information in the report and are urgently pushing for its release.

One official familiar with the appropriations strategy, however, cautioned that lawmakers hope to get the Mueller report well before appropriators start writing their bill funding the Justice Department later in the spring.

More likely, the strategy will be used on less high-profile inquiries to get answers from the Trump administration.

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Four committee chairmen — Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), Natural Resources Chairman Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Science, Space, and Technology Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) — are still awaiting a response from the White House about its proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security, which officials have said is meant to counter climate change concerns.

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The administration has missed the Democrats’s deadline of March 15 for answers about the panel and the selection of William Happer, a National Security Council senior director. The emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University has said carbon emissions linked to climate change should be viewed as an asset rather than a pollutant.

On the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Chairman Mark Takano (D-Calif.) has struggled to force the department to cooperate with his investigation into allegations of improper influence over multimillion-dollar Veteran Affairs contracts by three of Trump’s Florida country club members. Takano first requested documents in early February only to see several deadlines pass with no documents.

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Meanwhile, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has missed a deadline for the Education and Labor Committee’s investigation into her sudden removal, then reinstatement, of the Department of Education’s inspector general. That firing happened after the watchdog opened an probe into why the administration gave a green light to a “trouble college accreditor” stripped of its authority under President Barack Obama, Democrats say.

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Chairmen overseeing committee investigations have subpoena authority. But even then, the administration can defy subpoenas, daring Democrats to sue them in years-long courts battles that slow their probes.

The government must be funded by Sept. 30. And therein, Democrats say, they can pressure the administration.

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As they prepare to write the bills, Democratic committee staff have been reviewing how the GOP used such tactics during the Obama administration. Most of those were far less controversial inquiries, but Republicans provided a formula for linking requests for internal documents or information with funding.

In 2015, for example, GOP appropriators inserted a provision in a spending bill tying $25 million for the TSA Headquarters Administration to information they wanted on the TSA’s definition of behavior indicators of passengers they thought may pose a threat to security.

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The next year, in the Homeland Security funding bill, Republicans linked money for the office of the secretary to a request for information on visa overstays.

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Multiple committees have struggled to get the administration to respond to requests for information on the family-separation policy as well as the legal reasoning for Trump’s national emergency declaration to build his border wall with Mexico.

The House Judiciary Committee, a panel probing whether Trump abused power and obstructed justice, has been struggling to get information from former acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker about whether Trump interfered in law enforcement actions at the Justice Department.