Utah GOP Sen. John Curtis doubled down on his call for President Donald Trump’s son to be looked at, as Democrats prepare a “Trump Crime Family” probe.
“My position hasn’t changed,” Curtis said in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune. “Congress has a responsibility to examine whether presidential family members are using their access for personal financial gain, regardless of party.”
The incoming Democratic chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee has set four investigative priorities: corporate corruption, DHS and ICE abuse allegations, the Epstein files cover-up, and Trump’s family dealings.
Curtis put in a call in late September for an inquiry into the president’s son. He urged his fellow members of Congress to examine whether Donald Trump Jr. had made any financial profit from being close to the presidency, but his appeal was unheeded.
With Democrats promising to get to the bottom of the Trump family’s business, Curtis’s efforts may have some legs to them now.
In a statement, Curtis said he is also in favor of pressing on with the probes of Hunter Biden, former President Joe Biden’s son. Congress has examined the younger Biden to see whether he has leveraged his father’s office for his own ends. Lawmakers “nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships,” Curtis remarked in September, and “they shouldn’t unplug it now.”
Trump Jr. has not been subjected to that kind of scrutiny, Curtis said, and he partly put the Republicans’ heavy midterm losses down to that fact.
“Any investigation should follow the facts and focus on restoring public trust,” he said Friday. “That’s one of the many reasons Americans voted the way they did on Tuesday.”
His September call followed a ProPublica piece showing that Umar Kremlev, a Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch, quietly put up hundreds of thousands of dollars for Trump Jr.’s wedding celebrations, even renting a private island in the Bahamas for multiple nights. About 50 people were on the guest list, including Jared Kushner and other Trump family members. Kremlev, who met Trump Jr. a couple of years ago, according to his press office, was there with a good number of other Russians for the affair.
This is not the first time Trump Jr.’s Russian connections have been put under a microscope. In the wake of the 2016 election, he was at the heart of the Robert Mueller probe after word came out he had been at a Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer billed as offering damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
As for the Oversight Committee, Claire Leavitt, a professor at Smith College who deals in government oversight, told The Salt Lake Tribune in an interview Friday that they have wide latitude. “They can really investigate anything they want,” she said. Most committees are confined by their jurisdiction despite having the power to subpoena, but “what makes House Oversight and Reform different is that they have a jurisdiction that’s completely wide open.” So Democratic lawmakers can make an issue of just about anything, whether in the public or private sphere.