title:  Republican Senator BLASTS Trump’s Administration For ‘Unconstitutional’ Attempt To Hide Information From Congress
text: President Trump is pissing off a lot of his fellow Republicans with his inability to cooperate with normal, law abiding governmental business, and some are giving the president a piece of their minds.The President s legal team has been trying to limit the ability of Congress to obtain crucial information from the Executive Branch, and Sen. Chuck Grassley openly blasted them for it.The Senator lets loose in a 7-page letter on June 7th.  This is nonsense,  said Grassley, slamming them for their violations of the separation of powers and trying to get around the checks and balances that are crucial for U.S. government to run.The June 7th letter is a heated statement from a pissed off lawmaker about White House s Office Counsel opinion that the President and his staff should be able to flat out deny information requests from anyone other than the chairmen of Congressional committees.Senator Grassley s view is that it s total bullshit, and basically a way for the Whitehouse to cover up whatever it wants. It erroneously rejects any notion that individual members of Congress who may not chair a relevant committee need to obtain information from the Executive Branch in order to carry out their Constitutional duties. It falsely asserts that only requests from committees or their chairs are  constitutionally authorized,  and relegates requests from non-Chairmen to the position of  non-oversight  inquiries   whatever that means. For OLC to so fundamentally misunderstand and misstate such a simple fact exposes its shocking lack of professionalism and objectivity. Indeed, OLC appears to have utterly failed to live up to its own standards. You are being ill-served and ill advised. The whole process of checks and balances relies on the ability of any member of the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives to be able to request and obtain any needed information from the executive branch. The powers vested in the Congress   both explicitly and inherently by the Constitution   impose significant and far-reaching responsibilities on the people s elected representatives,  he said.  They include the authorization and appropriation of federal funds, the organization of federal departments, the enactment of laws executing the enumerated powers, the confirmation of nominees, the impeachment and removal of officers, and the investigation of the execution of the laws and of waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs. These responsibilities are all forms of oversight, all mechanisms that support the legislative check and balance of the executive power. All members participate in deciding whether, when, and how Congress will exercise these authorities. Grassley goes on to explain that by selectively deciding who it will respond to, the Executive branch is spitting in the face of transparency, discouraging bipartisanship, and getting in the way of the ability of our representatives to effectively do their jobs. Information requests are not hostile threats, they are how Congress makes decisions and does it s job.Senator Grassley concluded the letter by asking that the OLC take back the request altogether. It harms not just the Members who happen to be in the minority party at the moment, but also, Members in the majority party who are not currently Chairmen. It obstructs what ought to be the natural flow of information between agencies and the committees, which frustrates the Constitutional function of legislating. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images