Common Cause Calls for Immediate Hearings on Reports of White House Turmoil

Today, Common Cause called on Congress to uphold its oversight responsibilities and immediately investigate the alarming accounts of President Trump’s “reckless” and “erratic behavior” since taking office that were made by a “senior official in the Trump administration” in an op-ed published anonymously in The New York Times last week. In a letter to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Common Cause urged immediate hearings on the disturbing reports of a President run amok and a nation being run behind his back by unelected senior officials.

“Americans deserve to know the truth behind these accusations that the President poses a severe enough threat to our nation that the cabinet weighed invoking the 25th Amendment in order to remove him from office, and that those same unelected officials are in effect running the nation to mitigate the damage that would be done by the President,” said Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn. “The President and the administration described in the op-ed is one completely out of control and Congress must step in and determine the answers to critical questions concerning the issues raised. A shadow presidency is not among the constitutional mechanisms to address a president unable to discharge their powers and duties. It is past time for the Republicans in the majority in Congress to put their country before their party and provide investigatory oversight, because no legislation nor nominee is worth the potential threat to our democracy outlined in recent accounts of the Trump White House.”

The letter urges Congress to demand answers from senior Trump administration officials regarding the extremely troubling accusations made in the op-ed. The portrait of the presidency depicted in the piece raises very serious questions about the President’s fitness for office and how the nation is being governed and whom is calling the shots.

The letter emphasizes that our democracy “is threatened by ineptitude compounded by complicity of those in power who do not exercise their co-equal responsibility of providing a check against instances outlined” by the senior administration officials who wrote the op-ed. The letter urges key committee leadership to put country before party and do what is best for the nation.

To read the full letter, click here.

To read The New York Times op-ed, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration, click here.