Representative Gerry Connolly (D., Va.), a member of the House Oversight Committee, said Friday that the panel might resort to the threat of incarceration should Trump administration officials continue to ignore its numerous subpoena-backed requests for documents.
“We’re going to resist, and if a subpoena is issued and you’re told you must testify, we will back that up,” Connolly told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “And we will use any and all power in our command to make sure it’s backed up — whether that’s a contempt citation, whether that’s going to court and getting that citation enforced, whether it’s fines, whether it’s possible incarceration. We will go to the max to enforce the constitutional role of the legislative branch of government.”
The president and his advisers have said explicitly that they will not yield to Democrats’ demands that officials testify before the Oversight Committee regarding the issuance of security clearances, the formation of the so-called zero-tolerance immigration-enforcement policy, and other matters.
White House adviser Stephen Miller, former security-clearance official Carl Kline, and John Gore, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, have thus far all refused to come before the panel.
Connolly emphasized in particular the Committee’s desire to hear from Miller, whom he called Trump’s “immigration whisperer,” regarding what measures the administration plans to take to harden the southern border in the wake of Secretary of Homeland Security Kierstjen Nielsen’s departure.
“We want to hear from him: What is your thinking, what is it you’ve been advising the president, and where is it you think you’re going to be taking us as a country with these kinds of policies and personnel changes?” Connolly said of Miller.