WASHINGTON — The White House this week has issued an extremely unusual threat to the Democrat who will soon chair the House Oversight Committee.
In a Monday letter, White House counsel Will Scharf told Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) that his plans to request records and interviews from the administration next year could “cross the line into blatant criminality.”
Not only that, Scharf threatened Garcia that “issuing unlawful subpoenas with the intention of depriving citizens of their constitutional rights and privileges may warrant further investigation.”
It’s a shocking threat because conducting oversight of the executive branch, including through subpoenas, is one of the most basic functions of Congress. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the power to conduct investigations is an inherent part of the legislative process. It’s hard to imagine any court allowing the Justice Department to prosecute a member of Congress for demanding information from the executive branch.
But Scharf claims in his letter, obtained by HuffPost and first reported by Punchbowl News, that Garcia’s public statements, including that members of the Trump administration should “lawyer up,” are malicious and improper because of other comments that allegedly envision administration officials going to jail. Scharf also makes the standard executive branch argument that Garcia’s eventual requests would lack a legitimate legislative purpose.
“Bizarrely, you have chalked your motives up to nothing more than ‘gay’ ‘pettiness’ rather than any legislative purpose and compared yourself to a demonic clown,” Scharf wrote, referring to Garcia’s comments on a podcast and a social media post with an image from the film “It.”
The letter is a signal that the Trump administration will be maximally hostile to the deluge of investigations it’s likely to face from the incoming Democratic Congress.
“It appears Donald Trump has something to hide,” Garcia said in a statement. “Let’s be clear: Congress’ authority comes from Article I of the Constitution, not from the permission of the White House. Congress has wide latitude to conduct investigations and oversight, an authority inherent in the power to legislate.”
President Donald Trump on Saturday in a Truth Social post called Democrats’ threats to investigate the administration “illegal” and said he was “ordering the Department of Justice to look into this criminal act, immediately!”
The Trump administration has already attempted to criminally prosecute multiple Democratic members of Congress, including six lawmakers who participated in a video urging military servicemembers to disobey illegal orders. Grand juries refused to indict those lawmakers, but other cases remain ongoing, including one against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) over alleged falsities in immigration paperwork.