Trump Suggests He Can Gag Inspector General for Stimulus Bailout Program
In a signing statement, the president undermined a key safeguard Democrats had insisted upon as a condition of approving $500 billion in corporate relief in the $2 trillion law.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/us/trump-signing-statement-coronavirus.html
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The signing statement also challenged several other provisions in the bill, including one requiring consultation with Congress about who should be the staff leaders of a newly formed executive branch committee charged with conducting oversight of the government’s response to the pandemic. Citing his understanding of his power to supervise executive branch staff positions, Mr. Trump said he would not interpret that as mandatory although he anticipated that they would be consulted anyway.
Mr. Trump’s legal team is led by Attorney General William P. Barr, who is known for his embrace of a maximalist interpretation of presidential power, including the so-called unitary executive theory. Under that doctrine, laws that bestow independent decision-making authority on subordinate executive branch officials are unconstitutional because the president wields total control over deciding how to exercise executive power over the government.
Presidential signing statements are official documents issued by presidents when they sign new legislation into law. They leave a record of the president’s understanding of the meaning of newly created statutes and essentially instruct the rest of the executive branch to interpret the laws in the same way. Congress has no opportunity to veto them. The device becomes subject to dispute when presidents use it to mount a constitutional challenge to a new law that imposes some requirement or limitation on their power, essentially nullifying the new limit in the eyes of the executive branch. Often such disputes center on matters for which there is scant likelihood that the matter will come before a court for judicial judgment, giving the executive branch final say as a practical matter.
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But executive branch legal teams in administrations of both parties have maintained that the device is legitimate and useful. Some veterans of Democratic administrations that used signing statements — as Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did, albeit less aggressively — have argued that it is impractical to veto important bills over minor flaws and that the focus should instead be on the legitimacy of the theories of executive power that presidents invoke as the basis for their challenges.
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