With two months until the midterm elections, Democrats are laying the groundwork to launch far-reaching investigations into the Trump administration and preparing for high-stakes court battles if they win control of the House of Representatives in November.
Donald Trump’s war with Iran, his White House ballroom project, his family’s business dealings and the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files will be among the top targets of investigations if Democrats take back the House, according to conversations with over a dozen Democratic lawmakers and aides.
Democrats don’t want to squander the opportunity to act as a check on Trump if they reclaim the majority and say they have learned a lot since the last time the party controlled the House while Trump was in office. Few say they are interested in launching an impeachment process on day one, and many instead are eyeing a new tool that would be at their disposal to try to quickly compel the testimony and documents they seek: lawsuits.
Thanks for all this.
I understand what suing is (or at least I assume it’s not that far off from tort law)
What I don’t understand is why the democrats would have to have the majority in the house of representatives to sue. Does it have to be congress to sue? Doesn’t the blurb say citizens can sue? In this case does congress mean the senate or the house of representatives? Either or both?
As you’ve discovered, there’s another element before a court accepts a case. Standing.
To have standing, you must show that you have a personal and direct stake in the outcome. You cannot sue just because you are angry or disagree with a law. Courts only solve real, active disputes, not hypothetical questions.
Congress has to bring the suit. Courts have routinely held that in order for “Congress” to have standing in court, they must show that “Congress” has a direct stake in the outcome. To show they do so have such a stake, they routinely vote on a Resolution to establish that Congress as a body is bringing the case.
So while individual members might try to bring a case, it really depends on what’s to be litigated before the court. A President not following the law usually indicates that Congress who created the law, is the one who is to bring it. But if the President does something that affects specifically a single member, then that member by themselves would have standing.
Citizens can sue if they can show they were directly harmed and have a direct stake in some resolution to the harm.
As far as, the Senate or the House, it depends on the injury being talked about. A simple resolution from a single chamber is the most common when the injury is specific to that chamber. A joint or concurrent resolution (by both chambers) usually is to address a broad power violation. It really depends and it’s up to the Judge to uses what’s come before as a guide.
The House usually originates the spending, and so if that’s the topic, usually just the House is enough. If the President is abusing something like war powers, then that is indicated in the Constitution as “Congress” as in the entire thing. So both chambers might be needed to have standing, unless the issue at hand is that “The President has abused their war powers and not reported to the House Oversight Committee”. In that case, the argument is that the President isn’t reporting their abuse to a single chamber and thus only the House is required to have standing. Same if the Senate is conducting an investigation and the President refuses the subpoena. The injury is just to the Senate in that case.
It all depends on how the entire thing is brought before the court.
What would seem likely to me is that if the party making the charge is ‘the house’ as a separate entity then you would need a majority willing to vote to support such an action. As the authors of law they would have some authority to speak to the to the intent of it, thus standing.