WASHINGTON — Fresh off resounding wins in the midterm elections, congressional Democrats on Saturday placated their base ravenous for investigations of President Donald Trump, pledging to launch sweeping oversight targeting Trump and his allies and threatening to use the courts to enforce their investigative authority.
Democratic members of the chief investigative committees appeared at Crooked Con, a progressive convention in Washington on Saturday that brought together elected officials, journalists, and political strategists for panels, strategy sessions, media appearances,
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ranking member Robert Garcia (D-CA), the likely next chair of the committee, said he is working “very closely” with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) on mapping out Democrats’ investigative plans, and that the first few weeks are going to be “very aggressive.”
Raskin is in line to head the Judiciary Committee in the next Congress.
“We have this incredible power now that we didn’t have before,” Garcia told attendees. “With the House now, with Democrats in charge, we can go to the courts on behalf of the House.”
Garcia said that if Trump officials ignore subpoenas from the House oversight committee, Democrats are prepared to file civil contempt charges to circumvent the Department of Justice.
“Civil contempt goes through the courts, and so we have to use every power that we have, including the power of organizing, the power of public opinion, because if you look at the results of this election, people — corruption was like at the top of why people voted,” Garcia said.
Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) concurred, suggesting Democrats won’t back down from a legal fight with the administration.
“We have an independent judicial branch, the third branch of government, that we would have to go through to litigate if they want to,” Crow said.
Meanwhile, Democrats are multiplying their investigative staff ahead of the next Congress, underscoring the potential scale of the probes into Trump.
Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), a member of Oversight, said during a panel that the committee is “tripling the capacity of investigators within our committee, our staff.”
Ansari told the Washington Examiner that her list of people she wants to see the president’s two oldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, testify before the committee.
But, she added, her list is “long” and not limited to the family.
“As it pertains to Trump family corruption, the two Trump sons, the older ones, need to be at the forefront because they have been at the helm of investing in companies that have seen massive giveaways and contracts from the Pentagon,” Ansari alleged. “But I also think we need to see people like Stephen Miller, like Todd Blanche, like anyone who has been a CEO, you know, that has been involved in corruption.”
Republicans braced for forthcoming Democratic investigations in the closing months of the midterm election cycle, positioning the Justice Department as a potential shield against congressional investigations.
Earlier this week, Attorney General Todd Blanche defended new White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, declaring he “already has a lawyer. The Attorney General of the United States and the Department of Justice.”
The counterpunch began Saturday, when Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that he ordered the Justice Department to investigate Democrats over their threats to probe his allies.
“The Democrats are going around threatening a lot of people, including the Attorney General of the United States, and others, with Impeachment and many other forms of punishment, even though they admit they have no reason to do so, and there have been no impeachable acts committed, or even thought of, by the victims of this illegal process,” Trump wrote.
The side-by-side sets the stage for a potentially combative final two years of the president’s term, even though Trump has said he is willing to work with Democrats on issues like immigration and the economy.
Democrats have repeatedly said that they intend to exercise their oversight authority over the Trump administration over the next two years, with plans to investigate Trump’s family’s business dealings, immigration enforcement tactics, the Epstein files, and more.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) declined to “confine” himself to one area of inquiry, but said the “same folks who sat behind him and were complicit in trying to undermine our democracy for the last two years, they should now sit in front of the United States Congress, House and Senate.”
Raskin told the Washington Examiner that Democrats are going to be “in the business of trying to restore and renew the rule of law.”
“The federal government has been completely corrupted by Donald Trump and MAGA,” Raskin claimed. “Everything is on a pay-to-play basis, and we want to put things on the basis of the rule of law and the Constitution.”
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But the scale of Democrats’ oversight ambitions could pose a risk too. Crow cautioned Democrats need to have a plan about what investigations to prioritize, warning that if the party tries to push to do too much, it jeopardizes the success of those inquiries.
“The danger is we try to do everything at once, then it collapses under its own weight,” Crow said.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
