Congress is close to powerless in compelling the Trump administration to implement sanctions that it already forced him to sign into law.
When Congress sent President Donald Trump a bill in July that slapped new sanctions on Russia, the president signed the legislation reluctantly while lambasting it as an example of congressional overreach.
The administration has since blown past an October 1 deadline to implement the sanctions. Lawmakers are now searching for answers as to whether the president is even planning to follow the law that they passed and he signed.
“If they don’t cooperate, then further actions need to be taken,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told The Daily Beast on Monday. The Arizona senator, who chairs the powerful Armed Services Committee and has spoken out against the White House on its attitude toward Moscow, said the administration has left him in the dark.
But aside from procedural tactics, Congress is essentially powerless in compelling the executive branch to follow through on the law it forced them to sign.
The legislation, which was approved overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress, slapped sanctions on Russia and codified existing ones over its election meddling and incursions into eastern Europe that have drawn condemnation from the U.S. and its allies.
As The Daily Beast first reported, the Trump administration was engaged in active efforts to weaken a core part of the sanctions bill: that Congress would have the authority to review any attempts by the executive branch to unilaterally roll back or ramp up the sanctions. Despite those reservations and the attempts to water down the bill, support for the measure was veto-proof, and Trump signed the bill into law on August 2.
Per the legislation, the administration was required to issue guidance by October 1 on how it was implementing the sanctions against Russia. That process includes publishing a list of the people and organizations who will be targeted by the sanctions, which are primarily aimed at Russia’s defense and intelligence sectors.
But that deadline came and went without any actual guidance issued, and lawmakers feel as though they are being stonewalled by an administration which has the tools it needs to implement and enforce the sanctions, yet has not followed through. A National Security Council spokesman declined to comment to The Daily Beast.
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Congress: Trump won't implement Russia sanctions, and he won't tell us why https://t.co/dmvZ0ktMHx
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) October 23, 2017
They don’t need to be told why. They already know why. And if this was already passed and signed by the president into law what are they waiting for? If the President isn’t up to it they need to just go ahead and do it themselves. What a useless bunch of do-nothings.
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