House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Eliot Engel isn't a key player in the impeachment debate, nor is his panel holding contempt votes or subpoenaing information. Instead, in a show of rare bi-partisan comity, he and his GOP counterpart on the committee have managed to secure critical wins against Donald Trump away from the spotlight.
When we learned from former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that Trump got totally played by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, that little nugget of information came from an 8-hour sitdown Engel and ranking GOP member, Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, conducted with Tillerson.
As Politico notes, the committee also conducted a hearing to examine the Trump administration's sale of arms to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. Engel also sponsored a measure opposing the Trump administration's plan to lift sanctions on key Putin ally, Oleg Deripaska, which drew the support of 136 House Republicans even though it fell short of passage in the Senate.
According to Engel, much of the committee's relative cohesiveness is driven by shared misgivings over the mysterious Trump-Putin bond. “People are concerned to know the relationship between Putin and Trump,” Engel told Politico. “We’re working our way there.”
Bipartisanship or not, the Trump administration has still blocked Engel's committee from obtaining transcripts of Trump’s and Putin's conversations. That rejection came several months ago and Engel is still weighing whether to proceed with a subpoena.
Engel's panel may be working its way there but at some point he will have to pull the trigger on taking a more aggressive posture. Wins may be wins, but they’re not moving the needle if the public doesn’t know they happened.