Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said on Dec. 18 that federal agencies may start asking for additional congressional oversight with President-elect Donald Trump’s new appointees next year.
Johnson discussed the topic in an interview Thursday morning with The Epoch Times. He suggested that these nominees could make these agencies more transparent and accountable to Congress, using the FBI as one example.
The senator described Congress as a “shadow of itself” after letting its oversight authority atrophy. He said he intends to enforce that authority with renewed vigor in Trump’s second administration if he has the support of his Republican conference.
“We need to really understand that our oversight authority is probably our greatest authority and greatest responsibility,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to fund government, but then once we funded it, we need to take a look at what we funded.”
He said one aspect of Trump’s new cabinet nominees that excites him is their requests for additional congressional oversight on the agencies they would potentially lead if confirmed by the Senate.
“They are asking [for oversight],” Johnson said. “As I’m meeting with them, we’re talking about what’s going to be our strategy ... Trump needs people who can articulate what they want to do in these agencies, that are willing to fight for it, that aren’t going to be tender flowers and wilt.”
The senator added that he would be willing to split the congressional appropriation process in half, “or maybe even thirds,” to appropriate either six or four accounts each year before spending next year to three “doing oversight over what we appropriated.”
One example of a federal agency that he believes could be improved with additional oversight is the FBI. Johnson said that Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, wants to fight crime while “restoring integrity to the FBI.”
“They took all these decisions that used to be run at the branches independent of political influence here in Washington, DC, they moved people and the decision-making process to the political leaders of the FBI in Washington, DC,” Johnson said. “That’s what corrupted it.”
The FBI could begin by providing congressional committees with the information they need for oversight work, he said, particularly for any alleged criminal behavior. Then those committees can refer that information to the attorney general.
“I think that’s a very common-sense approach [that] certainly delivers on President Trump’s promise when he said, ‘No, our retribution will be success.’ He’s not looking back,” Johnson said.
He also said the president-elect previously declined to prosecute former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her deleted emails after Trump first assumed office in 2017.
“President Trump said, ‘Nah, we’re not going to do that. That’s what they do in third-world countries. We’re moving on.’ I moved on. We dropped our investigation,” the senator said.
Johnson said that Trump’s new nominees will be “opening up their agencies, making them transparent” with Congress by providing committees with the documents and information they need to do its oversight work.
