In Our View: Congress must work to bring us back to normal

The current chaos in Washington, D.C., is not normal. Nor is it healthy.

With multiple congressional inquiries — along with an investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller — looking into President Donald Trump’s actions before, during and after the 2016 election, the business of the country is being undermined and the Constitution is being threatened. And while Trump’s natural instinct is to deflect and attack — something his supporters consider a feature, not a bug — members of Congress must take a more measured approach to protect the very foundation of our nation.

Fully vetting credible accusations of malfeasance and misfeasance is essential to the role of Congress as a co-equal branch of government and requires bipartisanship. It also is essential for allowing the administration to eventually move forward with the agenda it was elected to enact. Hoping that accusations of collusion with a foreign power to influence the election are untrue is not the same as seeking the truth, and history will judge this generation of leaders harshly if the truth is allowed to remain obscured.

During the first two years of the Trump administration, the president was protected by Republican leadership in the House of Representatives. As the Los Angeles Times explains, “Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and other Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee essentially operated the panel as a public- relations arm of the White House.”

Now, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is in charge and says the committee’s investigation is focusing on “five interconnected lines of inquiry”: What Russia did to influence the 2016 election; possible coordination between Russians and those close to Trump; whether a foreign actor has leverage over the president; whether the administration is vulnerable to foreign manipulation; and whether anybody has tried to obstruct investigations into these matters.

The questions are serious, and they demand answers. Media accounts have documented more than 100 contacts between Trump associates and Russia-linked operatives, and the Mueller investigation has resulted in indictments or guilty pleas against 34 people thus far — including six Trump advisers. If the investigations are a “witch hunt” as the president frequently claims, well, the coven was quite crowded.

Trump supporters insist that the investigations are a Democratic ploy to cripple the administration. To assuage those fears, investigations must maintain a narrow focus that avoids the appearance of a “fishing expedition.” The House Judiciary Committee this week issued requests for documents to 81 people and organizations connected to the president, a sweeping demand that reinforces the rhetoric of critics.

During his State of the Union address last month, President Trump called for Democrats and Republicans to “embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise and the common good.” But, as is common with Trump’s view of the world, his definition of “common good” is selfishly singular: “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.”

Investigation should not be conflated with war. Ignoring legitimate questions about the actions of Trump associates would be to ignore a threat to the nation; accepting the word of a president who has made more than 8,000 false or misleading claims while in office would be to accept chaos as the new normal.

Instead, Congress must work to bring us back to normal and to restore the health of our representative democracy.