When Tom Suozzi was running to represent the 3rd Congressional District in November, he said he was best equipped to get things done in a polarized Congress with a record of fighting “powerful interests” to prove his claim.
“If you want someone who has proven throughout their career that they’re willing to fight on your behalf, even his own party, then I’m the candidate,” Suozzi said.
Among the examples he cited were his early support for a property-tax cap, controls on Medicaid spending and a “Fix Albany” campaign to eliminate corruption in the state Capitol.
All of which makes his response to the various inquiries surrounding President Trump and his campaign so curious.
Suozzi’s response to the many serious issues swirling around Trump have been, to put it kindly, muted.
When Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, Suozzi issued a one-sentence news release calling for a special prosecutor to conduct an investigation into President Trump and the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia.
That is hardly the response we would expect from someone who just months before presented himself as a leader in the fight against government corruption — especially when the president does something that, according to Trump, has helped precipitate an obstruction of justice investigation.
And last week, Suozzi was just one of 27 Democratic members of the House who didn’t join a suit against Trump in federal court alleging that he violated the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause by taking payments from foreign governments through his businesses.
Suozzi said he has been “very concerned about the president’s possible violations of the emoluments clause and have spoken about it since day one.”
But, he added, “I am simply not prepared to join a lawsuit at this phase and am working hard to reach across the aisle to try and solve problems.”
We share Suozzi’s oft-stated desire to work across the aisle and find common ground with House Republicans.
But we do not believe his efforts to foster bipartisanship should be at the expense of fulfilling his duty to protect the Constitution and the rule of law.
It is hard to understand what Suozzi may gain from Republican House members that is more important than ensuring that Trump is not making decisions which are in his best financial interests rather than those of the country. Or determining the extent of Russia’s infiltration into the U.S. election system and whether the effort was aided by members of the Trump campaign.
This ought not be a partisan issue.
Congress is empowered under the Constitution to oversee the Executive Branch. That lawmakers have not done so with the potential conflicts of interest created by Trump’s businesses is to their discredit.
And if House Republicans are not willing to work with him because he insists that the president be free of conflicts of interest, perhaps Suozzi doesn’t have the partners he needs to get things done.
This appeared to be the position of Rep. Kathleen Rice, a fellow Democrat from the neighboring 4th District who served for 12 years as Nassau County’s district attorney, when she joined the nearly 200 Democrats in Congress to file suit against Trump last week.
“Rep. Rice believes Congress has a Constitutional responsibility to cast a vote on this, and the denial of that voting opportunity leaves them with no choice but to take this to the courts,” a spokesman, Coleman Lamb, said in an email.
Lamb said Rice would have joined a similar lawsuit if a Democratic president was making the same arguments about his or her business relationships with foreign governments.
Trump has claimed that payments to his businesses by foreign governments are not prohibited by the emoluments clause, which says, “No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
If not, then they should be — whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican.
That would be an issue for someone willing to take on “powerful interests.”
Suozzi recently announced he had sponsored bipartisan legislation to establish within the State Department an “Office of Anti-Corruption Relating to Illicit Russian Financial Activities in Europe” to analyze Russia’s financial networks in Europe.” We are all in more trouble than we thought if the State Department — whose budget faces a 33 percent cut — and our intelligence agencies are not already investigating Russia’s financial activities in Europe.
But we at least see no harm in the legislation — unless Suozzi uses it as an excuse to not act like the official he promised to be during the campaign.
