Americans don’t trust Congress to fight corruption — here’s how to change that

Last month, Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) took a brave and principled stand. Following reports that a Russian oligarch had bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.’s lavish wedding party in the Bahamas, Curtis urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate presidential families abusing power, calling for subpoenas of Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden. 

An investigation would be a great first step toward helping Americans make sense of what has been happening in the country and rebuilding public trust in Congress. 

Revulsion toward corruption is a cross-partisan issue. However, most Americans have little faith Congress will do anything about it. Congress’s near-total inaction in the face of brazen reports of executive branch self-enrichment over the last year has only deepened Americans’ mistrust. And a new ProPublica report about a shelved FBI pay-to-play investigation into Congress seems to confirm the public’s worst suspicions. 

Congress needs to shift gears fast. Especially at a time when the Justice Department has gutted its anti-corruption capacity, including purging the FBI’s elite public corruption unit and forcing out the prosecutors who ran its public integrity section. 

Congress must assert its oversight of the executive branch, not to pursue political agendas, but to establish the facts and ensure accountability. That starts with investigating the following serious patterns of apparent executive branch corruption.

First is self-dealing. We already saw the huge, cross-partisan public outcry this summer over the proposed “anti-weaponization fund” — an IRS slush fund which involved the president making decisions in his own case, and potentially directing huge sums of taxpayer money to people who had been convicted in connection with the Jan. 6........

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