Democrats are turning to hearings to bludgeon the president

Democrats weigh a ‘Benghazi Trump’ strategy

The White House is refusing to hand over documents and impeachment proceedings seem unlikely, so the Democrats are turning to hearings to bludgeon the president.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN and ANDREW DESIDERIO

Democrats may not be able to saddle President Donald Trump with impeachment proceedings or pry documents from his administration, but they have another means of bludgeoning him: hearings, hearings and more hearings.

It’s a counter-strategy to the president’s all-out resistance to congressional investigations, lawmakers told POLITICO. Democrats say the optics are on their side. Witnesses like Attorney General William Barr, ex-White House counsel Don McGahn and special counsel Robert Mueller are all but guaranteed to draw blanket media attention. And even if the bold-faced names don’t show up, party leaders recognize that the spectacle of empty chairs and drawn-out legal fights could dog Trump and create negative narratives during the 2020 race.

“Let’s face it, most Americans are not going to read a 400-plus page report,” said Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, referencing the special counsel’s report summarizing the nearly two-year Russia probe. “They would much rather see something on TV that they can make conclusions for themselves about. That’s the age we’re living in. It’s almost entertainment.”

Democrats say a spate of hearings will also highlight Trump’s efforts to stonewall their myriad probes. The president has resisted at least half a dozen subpoenas from House committees and launched an unprecedented series of federal lawsuits to invalidate some of the information requests.

The approach is almost as much political as it is tactical. It gives Democrats a chance to navigate around the thorny impeachment question, while still showcasing their majority and flexing their investigative chops. And they might even uncover some wrongdoing along the way just as the 2020 presidential race heats up.

“There’s a big sentiment amongst some that they should ‘Benghazi’ Trump,” said Julian Epstein, a former senior House Democratic aide, referring to how Republicans spent two years relentlessly holding hearings about the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya, a process that revealed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The unexpected discovery ultimately haunted Clinton’s own presidential campaign.

Epstein, who served as chief counsel for the House Judiciary Committee Democrats during the Bill Clinton impeachment fight, said a spate of hearings has two purposes: creating a political weapon to weaken the president going into 2020, and also satisfying a party base frustrated that the House hasn’t moved to impeach the president.

“Democrats are trying to figure out what their off-ramp is here,” he said.

One, he said, is the hearing-laden “Benghazi” approach. Another is a censure resolution that passes on the House floor, effectively serving as a formal wrist slap for Trump. “They don’t have a lot of good options,” Epstein noted.

Trump and his administration have been eager to play the political card, too.

White House officials have either refused to turn over documents or delayed producing them to 12 House committees, according to Democratic aides. Several administration officials have also ignored requests for interviews and testimony. Barr, for example, is resisting plans to appear Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee because Democrats want to allow the panel’s staff counsel to ask the attorney general an additional hour of questions about the Mueller investigation.

The president and his allies argue that Trump has the authority to fight the House Democrats because they were openly taunting him with plans to launch their investigations and discussing impeachment since well before last year’s midterm elections returned them to power.

“By the time you hear all that, you say, ‘What am I, a sucker? I’m gonna go in front of these people who want to hang me?” Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, told POLITICO. “This is a complete political game now. It’s even being calculated by them based on are they gonna get hurt or not by carrying it on.”

Still, Democrats continue to lay the groundwork for more high-profile hearings.

On the oversight panel, they issued a subpoena to a former White House official to testify about potential security clearance abuses. The gathering would shed a spotlight on allegations that staffers including Trump son-in-law and senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner were granted clearances after initially being denied.

Over at the Judiciary committee, Democrats are angling to hold what might be the most blockbuster hearing — Mueller himself. They’ve subpoenaed the Justice Department for Mueller’s full report, his underlying evidence and are in talks to get the special counsel to testify as early as next week. They’ve also authorized subpoenas for a slate of former top Trump aides, including Hope Hicks, Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon — all of whom would create spectacle hearings that resonate beyond the Beltway.

And one attention-grabbing hearing could be rescheduled in the coming weeks. Felix Sater, the chief negotiator for Trump’s failed election-year attempts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, had previously agreed to testify but his appearance was pushed off until after the Mueller report came out.

“We need to put some color around the Mueller report and really come to a conclusion in concert with the American people over what the proper response is,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of the Intelligence committee.

“And until people are more familiar with the details of what occurred, it’s hard to come to a unified notion,” Himes added. “Certainly, in my district and around the country, there’s ambivalence about the right mechanism of accountability for the president. Just as in the 1970s, we need to do more work and better understand what occurred.”

With the never-ending gush of news, each hearing could also come on the heels of new revelations, giving lawmakers a rare chance to publicly press the key players. For instance, just hours before Barr was set to testify before the Senate on Wednesday, it came out that Mueller had sent him a letter expressing frustration with the attorney general's initial characterization of his report.

Within minutes, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a presidential candidate who will question Mueller as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had tweeted: “Barr will have to answer for this at our hearing. Updating my questions!”

The high-profile hearing formula has worked for Democrats in the past.

When Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, testified in February, it was appointment viewing. Trump fumed at the revelations from the public hearing, and Cohen’s appearance launched new avenues of investigation. Both House Democrats and New York authorities subpoenaed documents related to Trump’s financial records based on Cohen’s answers.

Some Democrats who have been in the oversight trenches argued that the strategy shouldn’t be viewed through a 2020 lens, though.

“Their responsibility is to be methodical and follow the facts,” said Phil Schiliro, the former Obama White House legislative director and a veteran House Democratic aide under then-Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman. “That’s not something that happens quickly.”

Even House Democrats are fretting about their limited time to notch victories as they square off against a Trump White House willing to push many oversight battles into the courts.

California Rep. Eric Swalwell, a 2020 White House hopeful who serves on both the judiciary and intelligence committees, said in an interview that it wouldn’t take much for Trump to “run out the clock” on Democratic document and testimony demands.

Others caution that Democrats might appear overzealous and even create sympathetic witnesses during a parade of highly publicized hearings.

“Do you really want to put Hope Hicks on TV? She’s going to win that,” said a Washington-based defense attorney who worked on the Mueller investigation.

Several Republicans say that Democrats would have more options for getting materials from Trump’s administration, and even underlying materials at the center of Mueller’s investigation, if they open up formal impeachment proceedings. So far, that’s a step that Democratic leadership has been reluctant to endorse.

“I don’t know frankly if it’s such a bad thing for Democrats to do that. Once you get these things and you explore it, who knows where it goes?” said Tom Davis, a former Virginia GOP congressman who chaired the House Oversight Committee.

William Moschella, who ran the Justice Department’s congressional affairs office during the George W. Bush administration, said the current Democratic clamor for documents and testimony “seems to be adding fuel to the impeachment fire” even as party leaders try to stay away from the topic.

“The Hill must know that these various unorthodox requests are going to be rebuffed and when they are, members are going to claim that those refusals are evidence of obstruction and that they must defend the institutional integrity of the House,” he said. “To mix metaphors, these things have a way of snowballing.”

Democrats counter that Trump’s run-out-the-clock strategy will damage his re-election chances.

Democrats expect they’ll ultimately prevail in court against Trump’s efforts to invalidate their subpoenas, including those seeking Trump’s financial information.

“If we get the information, he’s seen as violating the law or supporting a position that is contrary to the law, and we get the information anyway, that’s not a winning strategy for him,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), a senior member of the oversight panel.

And it’s those same battles that Democrats say could still produce the kinds of smoking guns that go off right in the heat of the 2020 campaign.

“I don’t think it serves him to delay all this,” said Swalwell, “because if he knows his history, he will see that the courts are going to rule against him, and the courts take time to make their rulings and so the rulings could come out at a time when Americans are thinking about who they want to lead them.”