How The White House Plans To Put Democrats On Defense On Oversight

President Donald Trump wants Democrats investigating him to be afraid. Very afraid.

That’s the unmistakable sentiment behind the president and his top aides’ recent suggestions that lawmakers could face criminal prosecution for launching investigations that the White House deems illegitimate.

In a letter dated Monday, White House counsel Will Scharf amplified Trump’s call to “jail” congressional investigators, writing to incoming House Oversight Committee Chair Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) warning that some of the House’s foreshadowed corruption probes could be deemed criminal.

The Justice Department picked up the mantle Wednesday, telling Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that his inquiries into the donors behind Trump’s White House ballroom could violate criminal laws and also put the senator’s staff and associates at risk. Blumenthal called the threat baseless. And the same U.S. attorney who sent the letter to Blumenthal followed up with a similar letter to Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) on Thursday.

Though Trump has long called for imprisoning his political adversaries, his threats now have the backing of an administration that has pursued and charged his enemies in ways it resisted during Trump’s first term. That shift has left Democrats to confront the prospect that a second-term Trump — backed into a corner by Democrats with subpoena power now that they control Congress — could make good on his threats.

White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told POLITICO that the Scharf letter was “not a threat.”

“Clearly, you did not read the letter,“ Bis said. “It's a reminder to Congress of their legitimate constitutional oversight powers. The only people who have made threats are Elissa Slotkin and radical Democrats.”

David Rapallo, a professor of law at Georgetown and a former staff director of the House Oversight Committee on Oversight and Reform under then-Chair Elijah E. Cumming (D-Md.), called the White House's approach “a little ridiculous” considering that Congress’ oversight power is enumerated in the Constitution.

But he is worried the threats could have a chilling effect on non-elected people who might otherwise cooperate with Democrats’ congressional inquiries “because they don’t want to be subjected to that sort of harassment themselves,” he added. “And then a question arises as to whether the executive branch is actually engaged in obstructing a congressional investigation, in that sense, which they could be.”

At a press conference Thursday, Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared to walk back the brinksmanship, saying there were no active criminal investigations of incoming members of Congress for their comments related to oversight. He noted that he had not made any determinations that criminal lines had been crossed.

But both the White House and DOJ letters borrow language from a criminal statute known as “conspiracy against rights” that some Trump allies have flirted with deploying against the president’s detractors. If the White House pursues this tack despite Blanche’s qualifications, it would add a new element to the traditional push-and-pull of congressional oversight of the executive branch.

The White House has for months been beefing up its defenses against expected Democratic oversight. Scharf has expanded the White House counsel’s office with 15 additional lawyers so far, and the office has been meeting with agency officials to plan responses to congressional demands. In August, DOJ issued an opinion saying the president’s executive privilege is expanded to communications with private advisers not in government, a position Democrats called an attempt to shield witnesses before investigations began.

Then there is Trump’s more routine taunting of his Democratic foils — a messaging strategy that goes hand in hand with attempts to deflect corruption allegations by accusing Democrats of the same behavior.

Trump took his own stab at that message on Thursday morning, saying the attempt to label him corrupt was just a deflection from “massive blue state corruption.”

His social media attack lines reprise the strategy he used effectively in his first term to blunt two impeachment probes. He answered an investigation into his ties with Russia by accusing Hillary Clinton of the same, and during his first term impeachment tried to shift the focus to Hunter Biden, which helped him hold Republican support through two Senate acquittals.

His aides also deployed the tactic in limited ways this term, personally attacking Democratic questioners during tense oversight hearings.

Those attacks on Democratic investigators have no legal or constitutional salience — but they’re a nod to the president’s deeply entrenched strategy to beat his pursuers in the court of public opinion, even if he can’t beat them in a court of law.

Republicans have made no secret that their early goal is to cast newly empowered Democrats as squandering their majorities on vengeance rather than lowering costs for American families.

But unlike during Trump’s first term, that attack dog messaging is now buttressed by a prosecution threat that the administration has already shown is not idle.

DOJ investigators probed Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) — a longtime Trump nemesis — over allegations related to his mortgage that ultimately went nowhere. A grand jury rejected prosecutors’ attempts to charge six Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Slotkin, for participating in a video that encouraged U.S. troops to disregard unlawful orders. And last month, federal agents raided the Washington home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in an immigration-related probe that she has called political retaliation.

Democrats say the veiled threats of prosecution won’t deter them from the aggressive investigations they’ve promised.

“The implied threat of an investigation is baseless. As incoming Chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, I will not be intimidated,” Blumenthal posted in response to the DOJ letter.

Amid those threats, the White House is also continuing to press allegationsof corruption by Democrats. Trump posted several times Thursday pushing that message. The White House rattled off four examples of Democrats, including former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez who was sentenced last year to 11 years in prison for bribery and other crimes, and former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who faces federal charges over allegations she misused $5 million in FEMA funds. The White House also added that Democrats voted against a House-passed bill restricting member stock trading. Democrats, at the time, argued the bill would not do enough to curb lawmakers’ trading.

“President Trump has launched an all-out war on fraud across the entire federal government, holding criminals accountable and saving taxpayers billions of dollars. The Democrats in Congress have refused to do anything to stop waste, fraud, and abuse in our government,” said Bis, the White House spokesperson, in a statement. “Additionally, the Democrats unanimously voted against the Stop Insider Trading Act, which would have ensured that Members of Congress cannot profit from insider information.”

Already, GOP operatives on social media are girding for the fight. Last week, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon posted one word on social media: “subpoenas.” MAGA influencer Katie Miller, who is married to White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, blasted in response a $1.5 million settlement that a bookstore owned by Wyden’s wife, Nancy Bass Wyden, recently paid related to a Covid-era Paycheck Protection Program loan her bookstore received.

Ron Wyden’s office did not return a request for comment. In a statement provided to Fox Business, Nancy Wyden said any violations were unintentionaland happened as a result of a misunderstanding of fast-evolving rules around the pandemic business loans.

Both Trump and Blanche have ramped up attacks on Democratic provocateurs in recent days, though Blanche has since tempered his remarks. On Sunday, asked during a CNN appearance about whether he plans to investigate Democrats and if what he’s describing is criminal, Blanche said it “depends on what’s said.”

He then singled out Slotkin, who told an audience at the University of Chicago in October that she wanted young people to think twice about working in the administration, saying “I want them to be like — ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want.’” (A student filed a Senate ethics complaint over her remarks.)

“When the threats become so vile and so dangerous that you are telling people in college that they better be careful if they want to work in the Trump administration because somebody will come after them — at some point, you have to draw the line,” Blanche said, though he added that he’s “not saying that necessarily that every case is going to be prosecuted.”

Scharf’s letter aligns closely with comments Trump made over the weekend in social media posts. Trump accused Democrats of threatening Republican donors and his top administration officials with impeachment “just because they happen to be Republicans.”

The letter to Garcia the lawmaker noted that “Congressional investigations must further a legitimate legislative task; Congress cannot employ them to exercise power of criminal prosecution assigned to the Executive and the Judiciary.” He argued that there are “well-recognized constitutional limitations on your investigative functions,” among other things.

Garcia responded with a statement saying Congress has “wide latitude to conduct investigations and oversight” — and that this “permission” comes from Article 1 of the Constitution, not the White House.

“The American people voted overwhelmingly for us to pass laws to root out corruption and abuse,” he said. “The Trump Administration continues to weaponize the government with threats of unconstitutional attacks on Congress. We are a co-equal branch of government and will not be deterred by baseless threats from a weaponized DOJ or from the President’s lawyers.”

The Trump administration can also drive its counter-narrative via cases it has in progress at the Justice Department, said Will Chamberlain, senior counsel at The Article III Project, a Trump-aligned legal organization founded in 2019.

He pointed to a number of cases, including the as-yet-uncalled Alaska Senate race, where Trump and others have accused Democrats of running someone with practically the same name as incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan to divert votes. The New York Times recently reported that Democratic operatives, including those affiliated with Mary Peltola’s campaign for Alaska Senate and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign committee among others, enlisted this person specifically to take votes from the incumbent. The Peltola campaign and the DSCC denied any involvement in the efforts.

“There are a lot of criminal prosecutions coming out of the DOJ that are sort of effectively their own kind of counter messaging, and that are going to continue,” Chamberlain said. “Congress is not the only game in town for newsworthy investigations and prosecutions.”