Congress doesn’t change hands for another two months. Nobody in Washington seems inclined to wait.
On Monday, White House counsel Will Scharf signed a letter to Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the Democrat about to take the gavel at the House Oversight Committee. It wasn’t a congratulations note. It was a warning, written in the calm, careful tone lawyers use when they want you to know they’ve already planned their next step.
“The Administration will not be extorted and will not be cowed by unlawful process motivated by animus, pettiness, hatred, or any other unlawful motive to intimidate, penalize, or interfere with the lawful functioning of government,” Scharf wrote.
That’s a long sentence, and every word in it was chosen.
The core of the letter is an old argument, and a sound one. Congress’s power to investigate is real, but it has limits. It exists to serve lawmaking. It isn’t a hunting license. Scharf reminded Garcia that the administration expects Congress to work “within settled constitutional limits,” and warned that some of what Democrats have promised “may cross the line into blatant criminality.”
Those are strong words. Look at what prompted them.
Garcia hasn’t been subtle. He’s run a “LAWYER UP” campaign aimed at administration officials. He’s called the president’s family the “Trump crime family.” When Speaker Mike Johnson warned that Democrats would go after the president, his family, his Cabinet and his donors, Garcia’s reply took three words: “He’s not wrong.” Over the weekend he told CNN, “We’ve got to be in the fight and be aggressive.”
You can respect a man for saying what he means and still notice what he’s saying. When someone announces the verdict before the first hearing, it’s fair to ask what the hearing is for.
The president didn’t wait for his lawyers. He called the Democrats’ demands “extortion at the highest level” and said they “should be held accountable.” Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department could look into it. Garcia’s answer, more or less, was bring it on.
So here we are, eight days after an election. Not one hearing has been held. Not one subpoena has gone out. And both sides are already at the barricades.
None of this is entirely new. Trump’s first term brought two impeachments, both ending in acquittal in the Senate, and a long subpoena war that mostly ended up in court. Democrats won healthy majorities last week, and polling of midterm voters found broad appetite for more congressional checks on the presidency. That’s a mandate of a sort.
But it’s not the only thing voters asked for. Some Democrats are already uneasy that their promise on the cost of living could get lost under a pile of document requests and cable-news subpoena fights. They know the history. Majorities that spend two years investigating tend to discover, come the next election, that the public was paying attention to grocery prices instead.
The White House sent its letter early, and on purpose. It wanted the other side to hear, before a single gavel falls, that this administration doesn’t plan to play defense the way it did last time.
According to a source who spoke to CNN, Garcia hasn’t received the letter yet.
He will. And he’ll understand exactly what it means.
