If the Republican defense of anything and everything Donald Trump does is a brick wall, Democrats are going to keep beating against that brick wall:
In the House, the [Democratic] party’s 21 committee ranking members sent Ryan a letter Thursday pleading with him to demand reams of Trump’s financial documents, including his corporate charters, balance sheets, income statements, and personal and corporate tax returns from the past five years.
“We must do our duty and be our check on the executive branch,” Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told reporters.
That’s a duty Republicans aren’t so much interested in. House Speaker Paul Ryan is continuing his policy of ignorance when it comes to Trump. He never knows anything about anything, it seems like:
“I’m confident that he’s solely focused on his presidency, that he’s turning the business over to his remaining family members who are going to run the business,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters in the Capitol.
The Wisconsin Republican said he hadn’t studied the details on the president-elect’s new financial arrangement and punted additional questions to the GOP-led committee responsible for Trump administration oversight.
And Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight Committee, is taking Trump on faith, too. Funny how much less interested he is in Trump’s many documented—but not officially investigated—conflicts of interest than in Hillary Clinton’s much-investigated email.
This isn’t just Democrats vs. Republicans. It’s ethics watchdogs, including the nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics, vs. Trump’s plan to dodge ethics. Sure, Democrats have a partisan interest here, but they’re not creating an issue out of nothing. There’s a real problem here—a president-elect who’s already using his office to get business and has a history of shenanigans with his charitable foundation—and it’s one Republicans want to ignore so they can get on with taking health insurance from tens of millions of people and implementing the rest of their agenda. It’s pretty clear whose side history is on.