Austin Evers and Mike Stern on Congressional Oversight

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4.7 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2019

⏱️ 54 minutes

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Summary

President Trump has declared that he will fight “all the subpoenas” coming from Congress and has claimed “absolute immunity” for White House advisors. In doing so, he has brought the issue of congressional oversight of the executive branch to the front pages.

To talk about that very issue, Margaret Taylor sat down with Austin Evers, the executive director of American Oversight, a non-profit government accountability watchdog; and Michael Stern, who served for many years as the Senior Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives. Stern is the founder of the Point of Order blog, which covers legal issues affecting Congress. They talked about pending oversight litigation, the House of Representatives’ strategy, how the Trump administration is responding, and if any of this is normal.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair
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0:25.6	no bull and the aftermath.
0:55.6	The other thing that I've been wondering is whether we're seeing Donald Trump the litigant
1:24.4	as president being totally different than previous presidents.
1:28.6	I remember hearing articulations of congress's power and executive power coming out of executive
1:35.9	branch lawyers mouths that didn't have a lot of basis in actual case law.
1:40.5	A lot of basis in OLC opinions and things that are maybe the foundation of OLC lawyers'
1:45.5	opinions, but that don't always hold up when taking to court.
1:49.0	And what was always striking to me is that when I offered to take one of their arguments
1:52.8	into congress and really argue it with my counterparts there, they said, oh no no,
1:57.2	you should compromise.
1:58.2	We don't actually want to put that argument on the table to be decided.
2:01.9	And it feels like this president and his pension for going to court is going to tee up some
2:05.9	of these executive power and legislative power questions that, you know, constitutional
2:11.3	theorists have been kicking around for a long time, but maybe never really wanted to test.
2:16.2	I'm Margaret Taylor and this is the LawFair podcast July 9th, 2019.
2:21.8	Donald Trump has declared that he will fight all the subpoenas coming from congress and
2:26.3	has claimed absolute immunity for several White House advisors.
2:30.0	In doing so, he has brought the issue of congressional oversight of the executive branch
	...

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