Elijah Cummings shifts into attack mode, targets Donald Trump’s business dealings

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has spent the past few years playing defense for President Obama. Now, he is about to go on offense.

With Donald Trump poised to take control of the White House in January, the Democratic lawmaker from Baltimore has stacked up a series of requests for investigations he wants the Republican-led committee to pursue, including inquiries into Mr. Trump’s vast domestic and international business and personal dealings.

Already lodged are requests for probes into the billionaire developer’s financial ties, into suspected Russian interference in the presidential election and whether Mr. Trump’s business dealings have compromised his pick for a national security adviser.

Mr. Cummings has asked incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Vice President-elect Mike Pence to turn over documents related to reports that Mr. Trump has tried to obtain security clearance for son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has been a close adviser during the campaign and the transition.

“Mr. Trump now works for the American people, and the public has a right to know if he is doing government business to help line his own pockets,” said Mr. Cummings, who begins his 11th full term in the House in January. “The oversight committee would be doing Mr. Trump a service by immediately reviewing his conflicts of interest before he assumes office to ensure that our government operates at the highest level.”

Because of his wealth and refusal to put his assets in a blind trust like previous presidents, Mr. Trump presents a special problem for investigative bodies on Capitol Hill, Mr. Cummings argued in his letter this week.

“We have never had a president like Mr. Trump in terms of his vast financial entanglements and his widespread business interests around the globe,” Mr. Cummings wrote. “Moreover, we have not had a presidential candidate in modern times who has refused to disclose his tax returns to the American people. Mr. Trump’s unprecedented secrecy and his extensive business dealings in foreign countries raise serious questions about how he intends to avoid conflicts of interest as president.”

Oversight committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican, hasn’t publicly responded to those pleas for investigations, and his office didn’t respond to a request for comment this week.

Mr. Chaffetz has said he will continue probing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent in the election, for her use of a secret email system and for suspected conflicts of interest during her time in office, although Mr. Trump said this week he was rethinking his call for a special prosecutor to investigate the actions of his defeated rival.

Republicans’ control of Congress over the past two years has given them an unmatched platform to pursue Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton. But with a Republican in the White House, the investigative committees’ roles could change.

Former Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, a Virginia Republican who served as both chairman and ranking member of the oversight committee during President George W. Bush’s administration, said parties tend to overcorrect in either defense or offense.

“Believe me, I’ve been on both sides of this thing,” said Mr. Davis. “The reality is this: that when the party of the president also controls the oversight committee, you tend to underinvestigate. And when the party of the president is opposite, you tend to overinvestigate.”

Mr. Davis said that when he took over as chairman, he asked Henry A. Waxman, the ranking Democrat at the time, for a “top 10” list of priorities for the committee.

“And the first one was impeach Bush — you know, all the usual stuff,” Mr. Davis said. “But steroids in baseball was actually one of his suggestions, and we worked that and we worked a number of issues — contracting in Iraq.”

Mr. Davis also said that, in general, areas of inquiry in the coming Congress could include oversight of government programs that aren’t working and other issues “that don’t embarrass the administration or that could embarrass the previous administration.”

With Republicans controlling both the executive and legislative branches, there are opportunities and challenges for both sides, said a former Republican aide who has worked on the committee in both the majority and the minority.

“Elijah Cummings will change from being a defense attorney for the Obama administration to being a prosecutor,” the aide said.

“Just in general, anytime you have one-party rule in Washington where they control the White House and they control both chambers of Congress, there’s going to be a greater skepticism, particularly in the media, that there will be rigorous oversight in that dynamic,” the aide said.

With past oversight committee Chairmen Dan Burton and Darrell E. Issa carving out reputations as aggressive investigators of the Clinton and Obama administrations, respectively, much of the recent attention on congressional oversight has fallen on the House side.

But there is also a leadership shake-up on the Senate side, with Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat, now in line to supplant Democratic Sen. Thomas R. Carper of Delaware as ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is the Senate’s counterpart to Mr. Chaffetz’s panel.

Ms. McCaskill, who faces what is shaping up to be a tough re-election fight in two years, was one of Mrs. Clinton’s most outspoken supporters during the presidential campaign and figures to be one of the leading congressional voices holding Mr. Trump accountable.

She had worked with Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio Republican and the panel’s investigations subcommittee chairman, on Backpage.com, a case that ultimately led to legislation making it a sex crime to advertise services of someone who is sexually exploited.