Trump spurs new watchdog groups

Organizations on left, right keep close tabs

WASHINGTON – One group has filed 12 lawsuits targeting either President Trump or the actions of his administration. Another has submitted 527 public-records requests sprinkled throughout the federal government. Yet another has collected 1.3 million signatures calling for President Trump’s impeachment.

The biggest risk to Trump’s presidency may be special counsel Robert Mueller’s high-profile investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election, which has already led to criminal charges against two Trump campaign advisers and a guilty plea from a third.

But the president faces an aggressive cottage industry of watchdog groups that are closely tracking — and challenging — his every move. New groups have launched this year, and others have expanded their missions, flush with donations from people eager to provide a check on Trump and his policies. Many have liberal leanings.

“If you look at the landscape of groups that are active right now, I think the Trump administration should be nervous, because I don’t see a lot of wiggle room for them,” said Austin Evers, a former Obama administration lawyer who runs one of the new groups, American Oversight.

“If they transgress, someone’s going to catch them,” he said.

The groups pursuing Trump say they are trying to keep close tabs on a president who is bucking ethical norms by retaining ownership of his businesses and abruptly firing FBI Director James Comey, who was leading the agency’s probe into the Russian government involvement in last year’s election.

“We are in a crisis of ethics,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington or CREW. “There are ethics and conflicts and influence problems in this administration unlike any we have ever seen. And it began with the president’s decision not to divest from his businesses.”

White House officials say Trump is operating ethically. They point to his signing of a far-reaching ethics policy that, among other things, tries to slow the revolving door between government and industry by imposing a five-year cooling-off period before former government appointees can work as lobbyists.

Republican groups are not sitting on the sidelines.

One GOP-aligned organization, America Rising PAC, already has 20 full-time trackers following Democratic Senate candidates in key 2018 races, along with a slew of potential contenders for the Democratic presidential primary in 2020, said Alexandra Smith, the group’s executive director.