Whether in the executive branch or in Congress, the Revolving Door Project believes that political leaders need to think more creatively and energetically about how they can leverage the full range of their powers to advance the public interest. Over the last several years, this motivating principle has led us to dedicate significant time and energy to convincing the House Democratic majority of the need for congressional oversight that spotlights executive branch corruption and corporate wrongdoing. In the context of the Trump administration’s lawlessness and beyond, congressional oversight is a powerful — indeed essential — tool to uncover governmental and corporate abuse, enforce checks and balances, channel governmental resources towards issues of widespread public concern, and galvanize long-lasting political support. We at the Revolving Door Project believe that Congress must exploit this potential.
Through op-eds, blog posts, letters, and interviews, we have sought to encourage congressional oversight at practically every turn. In all of that work — from pushing Rep. Richard Neal to request Trump’s tax returns and arguing in favor of impeachment to advocating aggressive pandemic-related oversight and meaningful investigation of the damage Trump caused to governing institutions and the civil service– our case has rested on a set of core observations:
Good Policy
Oversight has long been considered an essential component of congressional power and for good reason. In order to craft laws and continually institute necessary reforms, lawmakers need access to a wealth of information about the problems for which they seek solutions. Oversight also functions as a mechanism by which to enforce congressional will; investigatory powers help Congress to ensure that the laws it has written and passed are being carried out as intended.
Where voluntary compliance is not forthcoming, Congress has a variety of legal powers to ensure that it has access to the information it needs. Together with its considerable reputational and convening authority, these powers make Congress one of the most powerful fact finding institutions in the country. We at Revolving Door Project have consistently encouraged lawmakers to make use of this exceptional power to surface otherwise out of reach information about the Trump administration’s actions and corporate America’s behavior. Despite this administration’s unprecedented obstructionism, Congress nonetheless has the ability to obtain great swaths of information that are unavailable to almost any other party.
Even when investigations do not lead directly to legislative action in the near-term, they may still produce clear real world results. It is not uncommon for both public and private sector officials to resign following appearances at particularly humiliating congressional hearings. Further, the very knowledge that Congress is investigating may discourage lawbreaking in the public and private sectors alike.
Good Politics
For those lawmakers unconvinced by these benefits, there is at least one other reason to engage in aggressive, populist oversight: it’s great politics. As money floods our political system and even more overt forms of governmental and corporate corruption abound, many have lost faith that anyone in government has their interests at heart. Oversight that holds powerful actors — like practically any of this administration’s senior officials, BigTech, for-profit colleges, Wall Street, and on and on — to account for their transgressions can help to reverse the tide of cynicism by demonstrating that the government can work in the public interest.
It is also a particularly powerful tool in the face of a presidential administration like Donald Trump’s. While Trump utterly failed at the task of being president, he successfully commanded the conversation over his four years in office. By inundating the public with erratic statements and alarming, often violent actions, Trump made it difficult to keep up or to make sense of what was happening. Oversight, however, could have helped lawmakers to organize these chaotic elements into a single, commanding narrative: in this case, that Trump worked from his first day in office to enrich friends and benefactors while contemptuously stomping on everyone else.
Oversight in Trump’s Wake
Although Trump’s time in office has come to an end, there is an enduring need for oversight to uncover the full extent of the damage he caused. Although Trump waged many of his wars in public, lawmakers cannot ignore the possibility that other attacks were being carried out more quietly behind the scenes. Whether in the form of politicized hiring processes, corruptly awarded contracts, office reorganizations, or any number of other moves, left unaddressed this variety of attack could interfere with effective governance for years to come.
For that reason, it will be essential that lawmakers resist the urge to simply move on from what has just occurred under Trump. Only by developing a comprehensive accounting of his administration’s abuses will it be possible to reverse them and ensure that they are not repeated. And for every Republican who cries that it is “politics” to identify new ways in which Trump’s corruption and incompetence weakened our country — if the facts have a political bias and the outcome is to punish a political party for its leader’s misdeeds, well, isn’t accountability what it is needed to make democracy work?
And if this means that the Biden Administration is on its toes to avoid repeating the post-presidency recriminations Trump is owed — that would be a nonpartisan good thing!
Below you will find some of the project’s writing and research on congressional oversight. For a selection of quotes and interviews on the topic, please visit this page.

May 16, 2022
Barr’s Stakes In 80+ Fintech Firms Raise Crypto And Consumer Protection Concerns
Most of Barr’s holdings are in firms backed by Nyca Partners, a fintech-focused venture capital fund built by Wall Street and Silicon Valley veterans which Barr has advised for years.

May 11, 2022
House Oversight Hearing Shows Why Attacking Corporate Villainy Needs To Be A Priority
The hearing was a golden opportunity for Congress to actually hold a corporation to account for its objectively horrendous and potentially illegal behavior. On an ostensibly bipartisan issue like the opioid epidemic, one could be forgiven for thinking that the hearing would do just that.

April 25, 2022 | The American Prospect
Where's The Congressional Champion On Pharma Patent Abuses?
But for all of this, neither party’s congressional leaders have directly challenged the main legal mechanism that accounts for those high costs—namely, intellectual property. You’d think members of Congress would recognize the political salience of picking a fight with one of the most hated industries in America. So why isn’t anyone on Capitol Hill even talking about intellectual property’s role in driving high drug prices, and taking the PTO to task to do something about it?

April 19, 2022
How The Department Of Commerce Can Combat Economic Malaise
Responsible for creating “conditions for economic growth and opportunity,” the full powers of the DOC must be leveraged to combat economic malaise. Since the modern department was established in 1913, the DOC’s powers have generally been neglected and poorly understood. That’s in part reflective of the DOC’s byzantine structure: it’s a seeming grab-bag of agencies that either don’t fit in neatly with any other department, or are located within the DOC as a result of 20th century political knife-fights.

March 29, 2022
Biden Gave Most Corporate Crimes A Pass This Winter, New Analysis Shows
The Biden administration pursued at least 24 prosecutions and rulemakings to crack down on white-collar crime this winter, but took no action against at least 48 crimes or abuses, a new data set from the Revolving Door Project shows

March 28, 2022
Dylan Gyauch-Lewis Mekedas Belayneh
Anti-MonopolyCongressional OversightCorporate CrackdownExecutive BranchIndependent Agencies
Shipping Cartels Are Spiraling Out Of Control. The Agency Set To Regulate Them Doesn’t See The Problem.
The Federal Maritime Commission’s leaders have no interest in breaking up the shipping conglomerates’ price-gouging which Biden promised the nation.

March 28, 2022
Biden’s Weak Record On White-Collar Crime Is (Partly) Thanks To Congress
When Republicans blockade confirmation hearings, they handcuff the government’s ability to handcuff lawbreaking executives.

February 01, 2022
The Chamber Of Commerce Gives Cover To Scared Wall Streeters
Quaadman’s letter is full of technical language and oozes elite respectability, but underneath all of the jargon, it’s just a bunch of Wall Street banks scared that someone might hold them to account.

January 10, 2022
The Public Still Needs Answers About The Fed
Federal Reserve officials’ conduct has cast doubt on the institution’s credibility to provide these answers. It is, therefore, critical that members of the media and of Congress seek independent answers.

November 04, 2021
When Republican Votes Advance Biden's Nominations
Rahm Emanuel’s nomination is not the first time a Biden pick advanced despite Democratic opposition.

October 18, 2021
Congress Can't Leave Policing The Fed...To The Fed
It’s highly probable that Powell guessed in advance that October would be a rough month for stocks, and made a multi-million dollar choice to get out.

October 15, 2021 | Talking Points Memo
The Jan. 6 Committee Has The Right Idea: Now Congress Should Subpoena Zuckerberg
Facebook continues to lie to the public with abandon. That is one of the main takeaways from the Facebook whistleblower’s testimony last week. Even now, having been called out, Facebook is frantically working to obscure and underplay its own dishonesty.

October 07, 2021
Watchdogs Request Fed Leadership's Contacts With Ethics Office
“The malfeasance already in the public record is staggering. For the sake of government integrity, the public must learn how deep the rot goes at Powell’s Federal Reserve.”

October 05, 2021
Powell, Vice Chairs, And Regional Bank Presidents' Trading Demands Congressional Oversight
“Drastic action is necessary, because the prevailing assumption that what is going on at the Fed is a string of harmless, sloppy errors strikes us as wildly unsupported by the facts.”

July 29, 2021 | The American Prospect
How Biden Can Profitably Piss Off Republicans
Promoting good policy can also compel the GOP to defend the indefensible.