You Work For Us. Answer The Damn Question.
The people in power, every single one of them, work for you. They are not royalty. They are not your boss. They are not above the law. They took an oath to serve you, and when they sit down in front of Congress, they take a second oath to tell the truth.
You pay their salaries. You sign their checks every time you file your taxes. The President, the Vice President, every Cabinet member, and every member of Congress. Each one of them is on your payroll. So why are so many of them treating you like you owe them something? [listen to the audio version here]
I watched the recent oversight hearings with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and as a lawyer with nearly forty years of trial experience and seventy plus trials behind me, I’m disgusted with what was allowed to happen. What I saw wasn’t testimony. It was theater. It was a man under oath dodging, deflecting, redirecting, and lecturing the very people who hold the constitutional duty to question him. And almost no one stopped him. Almost no one looked him in the eye and said the words that needed to be said.
You work for us. Answer the damn question.
That’s the heart of what I want you to understand today. The most basic truth about American government has been buried under spin, bluster, and bad theater. The people in power, every single one of them, work for you. They are not royalty. They are not your boss. They are not above the law. They took an oath to serve you, and when they sit down in front of Congress, they take a second oath to tell the truth. Both of those oaths mean something. Both of those oaths come with consequences.
What Oversight Hearings Are Actually For
Congressional oversight is not a press conference. It is not a chance for a Cabinet secretary to grandstand. It is not an opportunity to relitigate what Obama did, what Biden did, or what some imaginary villain did ten years ago. Oversight is the people, through their elected representatives, asking direct questions of the people they hired. The witness is there to answer.
When a witness sits down at that table and raises a right hand, they are placed under oath. That oath carries the weight of federal law. Lying to Congress is a crime. Misleading Congress is a crime. Refusing to answer without a valid legal privilege is contempt. These are not technicalities. These are the rules every trial lawyer learns in the first year of practice, and they apply with full force inside that hearing room.
The witness has one job. Listen to the question. Answer the question. Move on to the next question. That is the entire job. Sidestepping is not allowed. Filibustering is not allowed. Pivoting to attack the questioner is not allowed. Talking about what some other administration did three years ago is not allowed. None of it is allowed, and yet all of it is happening, week after week, hearing after hearing, in front of cameras and millions of Americans who deserve better.
What Should Be Happening in That Hearing Room
I want to walk you through exactly what I’d love to see from any senator or representative sitting on one of these committees. It is simple. It is direct. It is rooted in basic courtroom procedure, and any first year associate at my firm could do it.
When the witness gives a non-responsive answer, the questioner pauses. Looks at the witness. Says clearly into the microphone, “Sir, do you understand that you are testifying under oath today? Yes or no.” And the questioner waits. No follow-up. No softening. The witness either says yes or the witness shows the country exactly what kind of person they are.
After the yes, the next question. “Sir, do you understand that you work for the American people, that your salary is paid by the taxpayers of this country, and that you are obligated to answer my question directly and truthfully? Yes or no.” Again, the questioner waits.
And if the witness still refuses to play by the rules after those two questions, here is the next move. Stop talking to the witness. Turn to the chairperson. Ask the chair, on the record, to remind the witness of the oath he was given, to remind him of his obligation to answer the question truthfully and fully, and to remind him that a refusal to answer can result in a finding of contempt of Congress.
That is it. Simple, clean, effective. The witness is sitting right there. The witness hears every word. The witness watches the chair nod or hesitate. The cameras catch all of it. And suddenly the dynamic in that room changes, because the country is watching a public servant decide, in real time, whether to honor his oath or face the consequences of breaking it.
Once those two questions are on the record, the original question gets asked again. And if the witness dodges a second time, the entire sequence repeats. On the record. In front of the cameras. Until the country sees what is actually happening. Until the witness either answers or buries themselves.
This is not a trick. This is not a stunt. This is exactly how every competent trial lawyer handles a hostile witness in a deposition or on the stand. You establish the rules. You establish the witness understands the rules. You hold them to the rules. And when they break the rules, you do it again, with patience, with precision, and with the cameras rolling.
The Same Rules Apply on the White House Lawn
This problem isn’t limited to the hearing room. Every time the President walks across the South Lawn or stands behind the podium and a reporter asks a real question, we get the same routine. Insults. Name calling. Attacks on the reporter’s network. Long monologues that have nothing to do with what was asked. And then the press corps moves on, the news cycle churns, and the question is forgotten.
That has to stop.
When a reporter asks a legitimate question and gets insulted in return, the next reporter needs to step up. Not with a different question. With the same question. And before asking it, that reporter needs to say what every American should be saying every single day:
Mr. President, my colleague asked you a fair question. You work for the American people. You work for me. You work for every taxpayer in this country. You took an oath to serve us. That answer you gave was not an answer. It was an insult, and insults are not a substitute for accountability. So I’m going to ask you the same question my colleague asked, and I hope every reporter in this room will keep asking it until you answer.
Imagine that. Imagine if the entire press corps decided, together, that they were done being props for a daily reality show. Imagine if every reporter held the line. Imagine the message that sends to every public servant in Washington.
Why This Matters Right Now
We are living through a moment in American history where the basic guardrails of accountability are being tested every single day. We have a President who treats the Constitution like an inconvenience. We have a Cabinet packed with loyalists who confuse serving the country with serving the man in the Oval Office. We have entire branches of government acting as if oversight is optional, as if truth is negotiable, as if the American people are an audience to be managed instead of citizens to be answered to.
When Cabinet officials say they serve at the pleasure of the President, they are telling you only half the truth. The President signs their appointment. Your tax dollars sign their paycheck. And the Constitution, the document every one of them swore to uphold, makes clear that the ultimate authority in this country flows from the people. Not from the President. Not from the party. From you.
That is not a slogan. That is the entire architecture of American self-government. The day we forget it is the day we lose it.
What You Can Do
You don’t have to wait for Congress to grow a backbone. You don’t have to wait for the press corps to find their voice. You can do something today, this week, this month.
Call your senator. Contact your representative. Tell them you watched the Hegseth hearing, or any of the dozens of other hearings where witnesses ran circles around your elected officials, and you expect better. Tell them you want to see questioners hold witnesses to their oath. Tell them you want non-responsive answers challenged on the record. Tell them you are paying attention.
Write to your local newspaper. Post on social media. Talk to your neighbors. The more Americans who understand this basic truth, who they work for, the harder it becomes for anyone in power to pretend otherwise.
And when you vote, in every election, at every level, vote for people who understand they work for you. Vote against anyone who treats public service as a personal kingdom. Vote like your democracy depends on it because right now it does.
The Bottom Line
The people in Washington work for you. They are not above your questions. They are not above the law. They are not above the oaths they took. When they sit before Congress, their job is to answer. When they stand before the press, their job is to answer. When they hold any position of public trust, their job is to answer to the people who put them there.
We have allowed too many of them to forget that. The damage from this forgetting is real, it is happening right now, and it will take years, possibly decades, to repair. But the repair starts with you. It starts with refusing to accept the bullshit. It starts with demanding answers. It starts with reminding everyone in power, every single day, that they work for us.
So the next time you watch a hearing and see a witness dodge, the next time you see a reporter get insulted on the White House lawn, the next time someone in a suit acts like the rules don’t apply to them, say it out loud. Post it. Share it. Demand it.
You work for us. Answer the question.
That sentence is not a complaint. It is a declaration. And it is long past time we started saying it together.
Mitch Jackson, Esq.
Related: Reporters, Start Doing Your Damn Job Before It’s Too Late
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Audio Version
Personally, I like Jeff Tiedrich's idea:
The first reporter to stand up and ask "What the fuck is wrong with you?" should get a lifetime pulitzer.
Audio version https://mitchthelawyer.substack.com/p/you-work-for-us-answer-the-question-2bd?r=2fe7t3&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web