The vastness of the red undertow took the pundits and pols by surprise.
Blue Texas. Mississippi. South Carlina. Kansas. Iowa. Imagine.
The knives are out in MAGA-land.
Trump 2.0 rodents are abandoning ship.
On 60 Minutes, Trump feinted at a kinder, gentler presidency going forward.
But at the White House, the wagons are circled. Nastier, harsher Stephen Miller now rules the roost.
Will Scharf, the White House counsel, zipped off a 3-page letter to Rep. Robert Garcia shocked, shocked, that Democrats plan to investigate such an upstanding administration. Scharf even raised the specter that these probes “may cross the line into blatant criminality.”
Garcia, the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, apparently caught Scharf’s attention by warning administration officials they better “lawyer up.” His committee plans to look at Trump family corruption, ICE abuses, Epstein, and corporate price-gouging.
That’s a tall order. But he’s far from alone.
Elizabeth Warren, the incoming chair of the Senate Banking Committee, and Jamie Raskin, soon-to-be chair of the House Judiciary Committee, are alerting Trump 2.0 officials, and Wall Street and tech CEOs, against destroying records; doing so would constitute tampering with evidence and obstructing justice.
It seems elections do matter.
Sen. Ed Markey quipped that tech executives “are going to need to plant forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing.”
No question, Democrats are chafing for accountability. But since when does conducting robust congressional oversight cross the line into criminality?
Quick answer: Never.
Not so long as the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause grants members of Congress absolute immunity for core legislative acts, including committee work.
So read Scharf’s letter to Garcia as signaling that the White House will fight rather than comply with subpoenas, recycling a litigation strategy deftly employed in Trump 1.0. Then Trump used the courts to stonewall Democrats’ requests for his tax returns, claiming they didn’t serve a legitimate legislative purpose.
After all, what good would it do to know that a billionaire president cheated on his taxes?
Never mind Trump’s frivolous argument, he succeeded in tying the matter up in the legal system long enough to run out the clock on disclosing his taxes before the 2020 election.
So look out for plenty more court fights and judicial stonewalling.
Historical Note: Oh yeah, Trump still lost the 2020 election by 7 million votes.
