Congress
Democrats want to probe Donald Trump, his family and his administration. But mostly Trump.
Democrats haven’t yet won the House majority. But top party leaders are wasting no time in preparing an all-out oversight campaign targeting President Donald Trump, his family and administration should they flip the chamber in November.
At the center of the effort are California Rep. Robert Garcia, who is poised to lead the Oversight Committee under a Democratic takeover, and Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who is in line to lead the Judiciary Committee. They are each already planning to use their potential gavels to investigate key Trump controversies — such as his acceptance of a Qatari jet for use as his new Air Force One and his family’s massively profitable cryptocurrency investments.
Garcia and Raskin both said in interviews they have a long list of administration officials that they plan to probe and possibly bring before their committees. But each said they intend to focus intently on Trump himself.
“Ideally, it’s the president’s sons and the president and the family,” Garcia said, adding a litany of other members of the Trump inner sanctum he wants to hear from. They include chief of staff Susie Wiles, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and son-in-law and foreign envoy Jared Kushner, as well as former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Cory Lewandowski, who served as her chief of staff.
In addition to the crypto profits and the much-criticized Qatari 747, Garcia said he planned to probe federal contracts awarded to members of Trump’s family and the series of pardons Trump has granted early in his second term.
Raskin, a veteran of the investigative onslaught that took place in the second half of Trump’s first term, said he planned to focus on allegations of self-enrichment by Trump and his family — as well as illicit foreign influence on American institutions and rising authoritarianism in government.
“We are going to be looking at systems of bribery, kickback and financial corruption and opportunities for disgorgement and restitution to the American people,” Raskin said. “That would be No. 1.”
Asked to comment on Democrats’ oversight plans, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales responded with a statement outlining Trump’s legislative achievements.
“The President will continue to draw a sharp contrast with his commonsense agenda and radical Democrats who want to massively raise taxes, defund the police, and are soft on crime,” she said. “The choice has never been more clear: doubling down on President Trump’s winning agenda or far-left liberal policies and partisan gridlock.”
Raskin and Garcia are forging ahead even as voters reject some Democrats who were at the forefront of the Trump accountability effort that unfolded eight years ago. And while the preparations Garcia, Raskin and others are making now in many ways resemble how their predecessors planned ahead of the 2018 midterms, there are differences.
Democrats in the leadup to the elections that year warily tiptoed around the prospect of impeachment in fear of alienating voters, and they laid out some investigative targets that did not implicate Trump personally.
Once in power, though, they launched a flurry of investigations aimed at Trump — including the president’s tax returns, his acceptance of foreign “emoluments” and later his effort to leverage aid to Ukraine for political favors. In virtually every case, the administration stonewalled Democratic investigators.
Now, after two impeachments that failed to remove Trump from office and with a party base intent on pulling no punches, House Democrats are reluctant to take anything off the table — while also recognizing the limitations of impeachment as a check on Trump’s power.
“Nobody on the Democratic side is afraid of impeachment,” Raskin said this week, adding that he considers it a “tool in the toolbox.”
The larger project for Democrats if they win power in November is to use subpoena power and public hearings to provide a backbone for the accountability message they intend to continue into the 2028 presidential election season.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries emphasized the wide-reaching scope of oversight inquiries during his campaign kickoff speech last month, in which he unveiled House Democratic midterm messaging that included a pledge to “hold the crooks accountable.”
“Anyone,” Jeffries said, “who is stealing from the American people, screwing over the American people, or shortchanging the American people is going to be held accountable beginning on Day 1.”
While the Oversight and Judiciary panels would be the leaders of the investigatory push in a Democratic House, other committees are set to target Trump as well in a bid to deliver the bold action Democratic primary votes have demanded.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a member of the Ways and Means Committee, said he expected the oversight subpanel would be a highly sought-after assignment should Democrats win gavels — with a potential “big” emphasis, he said, on probing Trump family corruption.
He added he was “very concerned” about how the Trump administration has managed the IRS and Social Security, particularly after the Department of Government Efficiency upended federal agencies last year.
“We certainly will exercise our oversight responsibility,” said Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, who is expected to return as Ways and Means chair in a Democratic majority.
Garcia and Raskin, meanwhile, have other pet priorities beyond the personal benefits Trump and his family have allegedly garnered in office.
Raskin said he intends to probe what he deems “fraudulent and vindictive prosecutions” including those of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Leticia James.
“The prosecution function has been utterly tainted and the Judiciary Committee obviously can’t let that go,” he said.
He has also set his sights on Paramount Skydance’s proposed $110 billion buyout of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal Democrats have blasted not only as an antitrust violation but also a threat to national security and free speech.
Previewing his intentions for the majority, Raskin requested a transcribed interview with Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison in a letter last week. While he cannot haul Ellison, a close Trump ally, before the committee now as a member of the minority party, Raskin said his inquiry into Paramount would be a “priority” if Democrats win subpoena power.
Garcia, meanwhile, said he is determined to fill in gaps he sees in the GOP-led investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He said he wants to bring key witnesses back to testify under oath, potentially in public hearings “because most of them were not called under oath and most of them were not called under subpoena.”
That could include big names in the world of finance, such as Leon Black, the co-founder of Apollo Global Management, and Jes Staley, a former top executive at JPMorgan Chase — both of whom had substantial communications with Epstein and met with the committee privately.
“I think we’re going to have, in the majority, public Epstein hearings,” Garcia said.
The Epstein investigation is similar to the Trump corruption probe in that it would potentially span multiple committees, and Garcia and Raskin both praised each other and said they are planning to work in concert on both issues.
Raskin said he doesn’t envision any issues with coordination between two panels
“There’s enough Trump family corruption to go around,” he said. “I don’t think we have to worry about that. We will just be dividing it up.”
Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.
Sen. Ron Johnson is sending a letter Monday requesting a conference meeting to discuss the midterm results and a delay in the leadership election.
Johnson has gathered enough signatures to force the meeting under the Senate GOP’s rules and is proposing the gathering for 9 a.m. Tuesday.
“Tuesday’s result was a stunning defeat,” Johnson and his backers write in the letter to Conference Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO. “Holding leadership elections without engaging in a robust discussion and evaluation of how those running for leadership intend to lead would be political malpractice”
Republicans still expect their leadership election to be held Tuesday, where Majority Leader John Thune is so far unopposed to lead the party next year in the minority.
Sen. Chris Murphy announced Friday that he has been released from the hospital after suffering a stroke last week, but will miss “several weeks” of Senate votes while he continues to recover.
“The doctors are very encouraged by the progress I’ve made so far,” the Connecticut Democrat said in a statement. “In order to take my recovery seriously and get back to work on the quickest timeline possible, I will be spending several weeks at a rehabilitation center after being discharged from the hospital today.”
He added that he remains in touch remotely with his staff and colleagues.
Murphy, who was hospitalized last weekend, said Friday that he was “diagnosed with a small bleed in the thalamus region of my brain.” Jose Suarez, the Chief of Neurosciences Critical Care at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, said in a separate statement released by Murphy’s office that the senator “experienced a small hemorrhagic stroke.”
“He has shown tremendous progress, and at the current rate of improvement, we expect that he will make a full recovery following rehabilitation,” Suarez added.
Murphy is the latest senator to suffer a stroke in recent years. Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) were both hospitalized for strokes in 2022. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), at that time a Senate candidate, also had a stroke in 2022 that he later described as near fatal.
The head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said his group will still be power brokers in a massive Democratic majority in a strategy memo previewing plans for next term.
“While some in the press have speculated that a majority of this size undermines our influence within the caucus, they have it exactly backwards,” Rep. Greg Casar of Texas said in the Friday memo obtained by Blue Light News. “Big majorities are good for getting big things done. Our goal is not to win a battle against other Democratic caucuses. It is to pass longstanding progressive priorities that bring down costs, root out corruption, and boost wages.”
The CPC will have at least 105 members next term, according to the memo. If Democrats had a narrow majority, progressives — and any other faction in the caucus — could have used their votes as leverage. Now that presumptive speaker Hakeem Jeffries will have as many 30 votes to spare, Democrats broadly are recalibrating their approach next term.
Casar laid out a “three-pronged” strategy for the CPC to “wield our power” in the three-page memo — tackling legislation, oversight and “holding Donald Trump to his word on populist economic policies.”
“Small majorities give corporate special interest groups the ability to block popular populist policies by recruiting a small number of opponents; a big majority gives us the advantage,” he said.
Casar previewed how the CPC can engage with Trump, noting that “one of the few bright spots for bipartisan lawmaking” was a housing bill that banned private equity firms from buying homes. He noted the caucus should push Trump to cap credit card interest rates, lower credit card fees for small businesses and lower prescription drug costs.
“While we oppose [Trump] strongly on the vast majority of fronts, we should send bills to his desk that would lower prices and raise paychecks. If he signs them, good. If he vetoes those bills, that will propel us to a continued Democratic majority and a trifecta where a Democratic president can sign these proposals into law,” he said.
Casar also outlined oversight targets beyond the administration, urging Democrats to specifically investigate corporations that use customer data for “surveillance pricing,” health care companies that are “taking advantage of seniors” through the Medicare Advantage program and artificial intelligence labs who are “putting jobs and lives at risk.”
“By focusing not just on the Trump administration but also on big corporations and billionaires, we will show the American people we are not just anti-Trump but also pro-worker and pro-consumer,” he said.
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