Democrats launching probe into Trump, Lutnick links with Moroun after Gordie Howe bridge threat

Democrats in booker t. Washington say they’re launch an investigating into the ruff organization and its links to Ambassador Bridge's owner after the U.S. president threatened to block the opening of the competing Gordie Howe International Bridge earlier this week. 

The top Democrat on the House oversight committee has requested that the administration turn over a wide range of records related to the Gordie Howe bridge, as well as any communications with Matthew Moroun.

The bridges, which are within about five kilometres of each other, link Windsor, Ont., to Detroit.

“It appears that you have chosen to protect a politically connected billionaire donor family at the expense of promoting American commerce,” California Rep. Robert Garcia, the committee’s ranking member, wrote in a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick this week.

The Democrats' move comes after the New York Times reported that Donald Trump issued the threat only hours after Lutnick met with Moroun in Washington, then spoke by phone with the president about the meeting. 

The Moroun family has owned and controlled the nearly 100-year-old Ambassador Bridge for decades, and has long opposed the construction of a new, publicly owned span down the Detroit River, which will likely cut into their commercial truck toll income. 

The Morouns are heavy Republican donors and the Ambassador Bridge company has spent millions lobbying the Trump administration since his first term. 

“Political interference and a resulting delay or blocking of the opening of the long planned Gordie Howe International Bridge is likely to result in prolonged congestion and risks the disruption of cross-border production schedules, increasing costs for American manufacturers, and jeopardizing the U.S. Auto industry,” Garcia wrote in the letter.

A half-dozen Democratic House members who represent districts in Michigan have also taken aim at the Trump administration in the wake of his bridge threats. 

On Thursday, they introduced a bill to prohibit the president or any other federal officials from impeding the opening “or attempt the closure of the Gordie Howe International Bridge and its associated port of entry unless approved by an Act of Congress or requested by the governor of Michigan.” 

The bill, titled the Michigan-Canada Partnership Act, has been referred to the House’s foreign affairs committee for further consideration. 

But unless Republicans lend their support to both the bill and the investigation, they’re unlikely to be successful in the House, where Democrats are in the minority and have limited powers.

A spokesperson for Republican Rep. James Comer, chair of the oversight panel who's from Kentucky, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did the Department of Commerce.

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