Speaker Pelosi’s Constitutional Crisis
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
It’s official. The idea that the country has plunged into a constitutional crisis is the new official line of the Democrats in the House. We have been precipitated into this crisis, no less an authority than Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided, by the refusal of the Trump administration to answer subpoenas from the Judiciary Committee. Its chairman, Jerrold Nadler, agrees with his boss.
Seven years ago, when the GOP-led House voted a contempt finding against the goose (Attorney General Eric Holder), the Pelosi-Nadler tag team stormed off the floor. Mrs. Pelosi called it “a heinous act” and “unprincipled.” Mr. Nadler tweeted that to hold Mr. Holder in contempt was “shameful.” Now that a Democratic House is going after the gander (Attorney General Bill Barr), the crisis is constitutional.
What humbug. The battle between the executive branch and the Congress over these kinds of subpoenas has been going on since George Washington. The record has been sketched by, among others, Congress’s own research service. The CRS issued a report in 2001 that traced the contest over Congress’s access to executive branch testimony back to the start of Washington’s presidency.
In a tug-of-war over diplomatic correspondence with France (Hamilton was the hardline protector of the presidency), CRS reported, Washington finally told the Senate that he had directed copies and translations to be made for it “except in those particulars which, in my judgment, for public considerations, ought not to be communicated.” There was another set-to over the Jay Treaty on amity with Britain.
That “executive-legislative” collision, as the CRS study calls it, occurred after the Senate ratified the deal with the British tyrant. Congressman Edward Livingston promptly demanded Washington turn over to the House “every document which might tend to throw light on the subject.” He even wanted Washington’s instructions to Chief Justice Jay, whom Washington had sent to cut the deal with Britain.
Washington refused. There was a flurry of maneuvering in the House to deny Washington the money to implement the pact. The funding passed by a slight margin, and the blow-up blew over. The feuding between the Congress and the White House has gusted up sporadically ever since. Washington himself thought the House could force the issue only if the matter involved impeachment.
Today, the danger House Democrats face is not just their hypocrisy in using against Mr. Barr tactics they found so shameful when used against Mr. Holder. It’s also that they are going to the mat so frantically and on so many fronts and after the special counsel has already cleared the president and his administration. So the House itself starts to breed a cynicism corrosive to the Democrats’ own cause.
Already Mrs. Pelosi is on the defensive over her motives. She is now trying to palm off on the American people the idea that this is not political. That’s a corker. She’s also trying to get people to believe that the Republicans want the Democrats to impeach the president so that the GOP can acquit him in the Senate just in time to help them win the 2020 election. Who would possibly believe such a thing?