The House Oversight Committee is tasked with holding the White House accountable — basically, "rooting out conflicts of interest, exposing abuses of power, and generally causing headaches for President Trump," as The Atlantic puts it. Naturally it is an uncomfortable job for the Republican chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who has found himself acrobatically dismissing charges against Trump.
Take, for example, allegations that Trump is using the presidency to make money for himself and his family. It's a serious concern — Kellyanne Conway was flagged by the Office of Government Ethics for telling TV viewers to "buy Ivanka's stuff," and Trump's Argentinean hotel was suddenly green-lit following his election, after long being held up. To those charges, Chaffetz simply told The Atlantic Trump is "already rich. He's very rich. And I don't think he ran for this office to line his pockets even more. I just don't see it like that."
Further addressing concerns that Jared Kushner's family was poking around a $400 million deal with a Chinese-government-linked company while Kushner is serving as a foreign policy adviser, Chaffetz added: "I don't see how that affects the average American and their taxpayer dollars. Just the fact that a staff person's family is making money? It's not enough."
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"I think the people who voted for Donald Trump went into it with eyes wide open," Chaffetz went on. "Everybody knew he was rich, everybody knew he had lots of different entanglements … These other little intrigues about a wealthy family making money is a bit of a sideshow." Read the entire story at The Atlantic.
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