“I’ll Be the Oversight”: Lessons from the (First) Trump Era

Abstract In this paper, I contribute to the growing corpus of literature on former President Donald J. Trump’s effects on American democratic institutions. I focus on the particular institutionalized process of oversight and investigations in Congress and extract four primary lessons from the first Trump administration, showing that, while Trump did not change Congress’ basic investigative toolkit, he did expose the legislature’s institutional weaknesses through his diminished responsiveness to the opposition party’s witness requests, his defiance of Congressional subpoenas and his simultaneous decision to comply with federal court mandates. By pitting the legislature and the judiciary against one another, Trump in his first term demonstrated the extent to which effective democratic accountability through oversight depends upon the cooperation and commitment of all three branches of government.