Government Oversight
To advance its legislative agenda, the Judiciary Committee conducts regular oversight of the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, among other government agencies. The Committee is also responsible for determining whether to recommend articles of impeachment against federal officials. In 2019, the Committee advanced two articles of impeachment against Donald J. Trump to the House of Representatives.
More on Government Oversight
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, issued the following statement today regarding President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Marine Gen. John Kelly to lead the Department of Homeland Security:
I want to thank the Members and panelists for participating in today's forum on the Electoral College. We are holding this panel because recent elections and public sentiment have made it clear that there are serious problems with the present system for electing our President and Vice President.
We begin with the fact that Hillary Clinton received more than 2.5 million more popular votes than Donald Trump -- the largest divergence between the popular and electoral votes in our Nation's history. This constitutes the very definition of anti-democratic.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Ranking Member John Conyers (D-Mich.) joined C-SPAN Newsmakers to discuss the bipartisan Policing Strategies Working Group and the Committee's efforts to reform our nation's criminal justice system.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Subcommittee on the Constitution Ranking Member Steve Cohen (D-TN), Subcommittee on Intellectual Property Ranking Member, and former chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) wrote to President Barack Obama today to urge that he swiftly declassify and release the full version of the Senate Intelligence Committee's Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program-commonly known as the "Torture Report."
In the wake of reports about the Trump Administration's plans to create a special registration program for Muslims, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Representatives Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL), Judy Chu (D-CA) and Keith Ellison (D-MN), today led more than 50 House Democrats in calling for President Barack Obama to completely dismantle the regulatory framework behind the discriminatory National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) before his administration ends.
After President-elect Donald Trump's vague announcement this morning to leave his "…great business in total...," all sixteen Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee wrote today to Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) to request that the Committee hold hearings to examine the federal conflicts-of-interest and ethics provisions that may apply to the President of the United States.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee Ranking Member Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) released the following statements after the White House announced the commutation of the sentences of 79 individuals:
Yesterday, President-elect Donald Trump announced that U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) would be his choice for U.S. Attorney General. We need an Attorney General who represents the American people's best interests by fighting to strengthen voting rights, prevent violence against women, and work to reform our broken immigration system, among other priorities. Senator Sessions was denied a federal judgeship in 1986 following a history of racially-charged comments and disturbing attitudes towards minority groups; and his record since only furthers cause for concern.
This morning, President-elect Donald Trump announced that U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) would be his choice for Attorney General. We need an Attorney General who represents the American people's best interests by fighting to strengthen voting rights, prevent violence against women, and work to reform our broken immigration system, among other priorities. Senator Sessions was denied a federal judgeship in 1986 following a history of racially-charged comments and disturbing attitudes towards minority groups; and his record since only furthers cause for concern.
While the purpose of H.R. 1669, the "Judgment Fund Transparency Act of 2016," is ostensibly to promote greater transparency in government, I fear that its real purpose is to once again attack the Obama Administration's integrity.
The bill would require the Treasury Department to publicly disclose via the Internet various details about payments it makes on claims paid out of the Judgment Fund, most of which is already available on the Department's website.