Oversight is a core constitutional role of Congress. The Supreme Court has affirmed that it is inherent to the legislative process, as Congress cannot effectively legislate without identifying existing gaps in current law by conducting oversight.
For more than a century, prominent congressional investigations have led to significant legislative reforms. The Senate investigation into the Titanic disaster prompted improvements in maritime safety laws. The 1970s Church Committee’s findings on domestic surveillance led to the creation of House and Senate intelligence committees. In the 1990s, tobacco hearings exposed the harms of smoking. The 2008 financial crisis investigations revealed systemic failures, resulting in legislative reforms.
However, many investigations fail due to a lack of experienced investigators, partisanship, and executive branch stonewalling. Increasingly, the executive branch uses broad assertions of privilege to withhold documents and testimony, delaying inquiries through years-long litigation that often renders congressional requests moot. Such obstruction undermines Congress’s role as the first branch among equals.
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Congressional oversight ensures accountability and ethical governance but is increasingly hindered by partisanship and executive obstruction. When conducting an oversight investigation, it is important for congressional staff to develop their investigations by focusing on open-ended, factual questions. It is the job of Congress to determine what happened and why. A fact-first approach allows the investigation to follow the evidence without bias, rather than attempting to confirm a hypothesis, which can skew the results and lead to partisan gridlock. Achieving bipartisanship based on the facts can significantly increase the chances of passing meaningful reforms that prevent the problem from reoccurring.
The 118th Congress offered useful lessons in how these dynamics unfold during congressional investigations. Its investigations into the Afghanistan withdrawal and the assassination attempts against President Donald Trump highlight these challenges, but also the ongoing promise of fact-driven congressional oversight.
Afghanistan Withdrawal Investigation
The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s investigation into the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan illustrates how both executive obstruction and partisan motivations can undermine oversight.
The committee faced significant resistance from the executive branch. In January 2023, the committee requested documents related to the State Department’s internal After Action Review (AAR). Despite repeated requests, subpoenas, and warnings of compulsory action, the State Department failed to produce key materials.
In October 2023, the Department cited “executive branch confidentiality interests” to justify withholding portions of the AAR report. It was not until after the committee initiated contempt proceedings that the Department released the requested materials.
The committee also struggled to secure testimony from key officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. While Blinken testified multiple times, he did not comply with a subpoena to appear in September 2024, prompting the committee to vote to hold him in contempt. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) delayed a full House vote until after the election, and in late November, Blinken reached an arrangement to testify in mid-December 2024. Meanwhile, the committee’s efforts to compel Sullivan’s testimony stalled. He refused to appear voluntarily, despite the committee providing a list of names of former national security advisors who had previously appeared before Congress as evidence of an “established precedent” of cooperation by presidential advisors.
“Congressional oversight ensures accountability and ethical governance but is increasingly hindered by partisanship and executive obstruction.”
Partisanship also appears to have complicated the committee’s work. The committee’s majority report focused on the failures of the Biden administration, while the minority released its own report focusing on the Trump administration’s role in setting the withdrawal in motion. These conflicting framings suggest a desire to score points rather than to untangle the full scope of what went wrong at the end of the United States’ war in Afghanistan.
Partisan motivations also may have undermined the attempt to secure Blinken’s testimony in the fall of 2024. The committee demanded Blinken’s appearance on dates when he was out of the country or at the United Nations, prompting the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to claim that the subpoena was unenforceable because it interfered with the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy. In this instance, a more earnest effort to find a genuine accommodation would have avoided an escalation that did not serve the committee’s interests and may undermine congressional subpoenas in the long term.
House Task Force on Assassination Attempts
Less than two weeks after a gunman wounded then-candidate Trump and killed an attendee at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, the House established a bipartisan task force to investigate the incident. The task force expanded its scope after a second assassination attempt on Trump in Florida. The task force offers a positive model for fact-driven investigations.
When appointing the members of the task force, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said the task force would be able to “find the facts, ensure accountability, and help make certain such failures never happen again.” The task force worked remarkably quickly, releasing an interim report on behalf of the full panel in October and releasing a unanimous final report in December. The report found that there were significant failures in the planning, execution, and leadership of the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners. The report also outlined a series of recommendations for improvement, and its bipartisan nature adds weight to these suggestions, increasing the pressure on the Secret Service to implement meaningful reforms.
Even so, the task force encountered some resistance from the executive branch. Despite two letters to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the task force was forced to issue subpoenas to two employees, and the agency was over a month late in beginning its document productions.
“To uphold its constitutional role, Congress must prioritize institutional integrity, seek bipartisan cooperation, and pursue procedural reforms to maintain oversight as a robust accountability tool.”
Despite some issues with executive branch compliance, the task force appears to be a model for efficient and effective oversight. Notably, all of the task force’s information requests appear to be signed by both the chair and ranking member, presenting a bipartisan front. Working across the aisle, the panel secured key evidence and produced a single, consensus report with responsive recommendations.
Conclusion
To uphold its constitutional role, Congress must prioritize institutional integrity, seek bipartisan cooperation, and pursue procedural reforms to maintain oversight as a robust accountability tool. It should use its legislative and rulemaking authority to bolster its own capacity to generate research and legal analysis. For instance, creating an entity to provide the type of legal opinions the Office of Legal Counsel provides the executive branch would better empower Congress to advance its own institutional prerogatives. In addition, Congress should invest in its own staff capacity so that committees have the expertise, experience, and resources to conduct effective oversight.
While the minority party’s refusal to participate should not prevent necessary investigations from occurring, committees should recognize that many of the strongest investigations do benefit from buy-in across the aisle. Bipartisan cooperation can improve capacity, streamline information requests, and result in more persuasive final products. When consensus is not possible, committees should issue one report with opposing views to help better identify areas of agreement and disagreements on the facts, rather than issuing dueling reports by the majority and minority.
Finally, Congress should bolster the processes for resolving information disputes with the executive branch. Currently, executive agencies and officials can often outlast a congressional investigation. Congress could remedy this by creating new processes that speed up lawsuits or otherwise incentivize compliance with congressional requests.
