Rep. Elijah Cummings on Trump election probe: We’ll ‘hit the ground flying’
By Mark Moore January 13, 2019 | 7:02pm
The new chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee said his panel will hit the ground “not running, but flying” to investigate the Trump administration.
Questioned that his committee would have just two years before the 2020 election to probe the Trump White House, Rep. Elijah Cummings said the window is even smaller.
“Less than that. Actually, less than that. The Congress doesn’t meet but so many days in a year. And all I’m saying is that we’ve got to hit the ground, not running, but flying,” Cummings (D-Md.) said on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday evening.
While other House panels — like the intelligence and judiciary committees — are restricted to specific areas, Cummings’ committee is not.
We can look at “anything. But the fact that we can look at anything is part of the problem. There’s so much,” he said with a chuckle. “No, I’m serious. There’s so much.”
Cummings’ staff has already sent out scores of letters to government officials, the White House and the Trump Organization seeking documents related to investigations that the panel is expected to launch, the news show said.
The investigations could involve Cabinet members’ use of government-owned aircraft and foreign money being spent at Trump businesses like his Washington, DC, hotel.
Cummings said he believes the president is profiting from his time in the White House.
“It’s not okay. And — but this is the other piece — I still believe that people, the average citizen, the guys on my block, they ought to know if the president is making a deal, whether he’s making it, making it in his self-interest or that of the country,” Cummings said.
The White House said such claims are “baseless.”
Cummings said he knows that House Republicans who in the last Congress protected Trump will try to do so again and create obstacles for the committee.
He believes they will also try to block special counsel Robert Mueller’s report from becoming public.
“There’s one big elephant that’s sitting around here that we don’t know what it’s going to yield. And that is Mueller’s report. I don’t know what that report is going to have in it,” Cummings said.
“One thing I do know, though, is whatever it is, even if it exonerates the president, fine. But this I do know: I want whatever it is, for the Congress to have it, and I want the public to have it, so that everybody can make a judgment.”
https://nypost.com/2019/01/13/rep-elijah-cummings-on-trump-election-probe-well-hit-the-ground-flying/