White House Threatens to Charge Democrats if They Investigate

The White House is threatening Democrats in Congress, warning them that investigating President Donald Trump could cross the line into criminal action.

Punchbowl News reports that White House counsel Will Scharf sent a letter on Monday to Democratic Representative Robert Garcia, the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, saying that congressional investigations “must further a legitimate executive task; Congress cannot employ them to exercise powers of criminal prosecution assigned to the Executive and the Judiciary.”

Garcia and his fellow Democrats have made “it abundantly clear that any forthcoming investigative processes will be deployed to harass and aggrandize, rather than to advance any legitimate legislative end,” Scharf claims, citing statements by incoming Democrats calling for the prosecution of ICE agents, trials for tech executives, and hearings for Cabinet secretaries like embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The letter is an extreme attempt to intimidate House Democrats into backing off Trump and his legally questionable actions, and it makes a mockery of the constitutional separation of powers, as well as checks and balances between the three branches of government. Scharf is taking a questionable Republican position that effectively says that Congress has no critical oversight over the executive branch.

The warning is rich, considering how the Trump administration has pushed sham prosecutions against members of Congress who told military and intelligence personnel not to follow illegal orders or who protested against ICE. That’s to say nothing of the targeting of many of Trump’s perceived enemies. It seems that the White House knows it has something to hide and thinks of itself as above the law.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has 11 Democratic House members to thank for tanking the nascent effort to impeach him.

House Republicans blocked Representative Thomas Massie’s articles of impeachment against Hegseth from reaching the floor by a 211–204 vote. While Republicans were initially concerned they lacked the party votes to block the resolution, it was 11 absent Democratic lawmakers who handed them a victory.

Their names are:

• Melanie Stansbury (New Mexico)
• Marilyn Strickland (Washington)
• Julia Brownley (California)
• Lou Correa (California)
• Laura Gillen (New York)
• Steven Horsford (Nevada)
• Jonathan Jackson (Illinois)
• Nancy Pelosi (California)
• Brittany Pettersen (Colorado)
• Haley Stevens (Michigan)
• Frederica Wilson (Florida)

Some of those truant Democratic lawmakers said they were stuck in “bumper-to-bumper” traffic on their way back from a new member reception held by the Elect Democratic Women PAC, according to Axios’s Andrew Solender. That group’s offshoot, the EDW Action Fund, has served as a major pass-through for funds from United Democracy Project, a super PAC formed by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. It’s not clear which members were in attendance at the event.

Representative Katherine Clark, who as Democratic whip is responsible for organizing her party’s House members ahead of a vote, is also one of the founding members of EDW. Clark was not absent for the vote, and called the results a “disgrace.”

Of the 11 Democrats who missed the Hegseth vote, eight have received support from EDW or its action group, including Brownley, who sits on the organization’s executive board, and Stansbury, who serves on the board of directors.

House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, said she missed the vote because she flew back to San Francisco for the Swords to Plowshares 30th Annual Veterans Day Celebration. Horsford’s office said he had a personal emergency, and Correa previously said he was undergoing a medical procedure.

The resounding Democratic failure comes amid a tidal wave of calls for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to step down following sweeping Democratic victories in the House and Senate. Jeffries faces criticism for failing to unite Democrats to mount a compelling challenge against the Trump administration. Now it appears that he couldn’t even get them to all show up for one important vote.

After the vote, Jeffries told Politico, “I haven’t had a conversation with anyone on the floor team about what may or may not have happened in terms of the Hegseth resolution, but this is not the end of it. It’s just the beginning.”

President Donald Trump called the results of Tuesday’s vote a total “exoneration” of Hegseth.

This story has been updated.

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen is plotting out his position against Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.

“I am listening to all the people from around the country that were calling for big change,” Van Hollen said at the Popular Mandate national conference Tuesday, according to Semafor reporter David Weigel. “I am in the process right now of calling my colleagues.”

“We just saw democracy in America in action. We should bring a little more democracy to the United States Senate,” Van Hollen continued. “We have two newly-elected senators who would not be there if Schumer and the [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] had their way.”

Van Hollen then drew a line in the sand, arguing that Schumer and the DSCC had “sided with the crypto industry” and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known by the acronym AIPAC.

A wave of Democratic voices have been opposing Schumer’s leadership and establishment politics since the party won the majority in Congress in last week’s elections. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen has emerged as a potential alternative, indicating a rising interest in progressive leadership. His office has received an “outpouring of calls and is now in active listening mode,” one source told Politico’s Playbook.

Van Hollen’s national profile rose last year when he traveled out of the country to visit his constituent Kilmar Ábrego García after García was illegally deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s notoriously lethal maximum security prison, CECOT.

Whether or not Van Hollen will officially commit himself against Schumer remains to be seen, though the Marylander has already started to draft an opposition platform that could put pressure on Schumer’s politics. On Tuesday, Van Hollen declared that the U.S. cannot spend “a penny more” on the Iran war, daring Donald Trump to either stop funding the war or face the possibility of a government shutdown.

So far, at least 10 major senators or senators-elect have either peeled away from Schumer outright or indicated interest in a different Senate majority leader. Another 14 have not yet committed as to whether they will support Schumer, according to an analysis published Monday by Primary Democrats. Altogether, that’s 24 Democrats—or nearly half of the at least 54 Democratic seats that will dominate the upper chamber come January.

But Schumer remains undeterred by the mounting opposition.

“I’m confident I will be elected majority leader,” Schumer said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. “Our caucus is really united in focusing on bringing down costs, on ending the corruption, on ending the chaos, on ending the war. We have great unity in our caucus and I’ll be proud to lead as majority leader.”

A Minneapolis woman who was violently pulled out of her car and arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while she was on her way to a doctor’s appointment in January is suing the federal government.

Aliya Rahman, a Minneapolis resident, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Minnesota Tuesday claiming that she was the victim of false arrest and imprisonment, negligent supervision, negligence, assault, and battery.

“I am one of many who have been impacted by this government’s vile abuse of power,” Rahman said in a statement. “And while this lawsuit stems from what happened in January, the terror did not start there and has not stopped.”

Rahman, who is autistic and has physical disabilities, was traveling to a medical appointment on January 13 during Operation Metro Surge, the federal government’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota’s twin cities. ICE agents surrounded her car and smashed her window after she said, “They needed to learn how to respect human beings,” her complaint states. They then dragged her out of the car and sent her to a federal detention facility for hours. She said that she was denied medical care while in ICE custody, and had to go to the hospital after losing consciousness.

Her violent arrest was captured on video and went viral online, and she later testified before Congress. She went on to attend President Trump’s State of the Union address in February as a guest of Representative Ilhan Omar, and was arrested by Capitol police for “disruption of Congress.”*

Rahman’s lawsuit comes after multiple attempts to hold ICE agents accountable. She filed a Federal Tort Claims Act claim alleging unlawful force and detention in April, and in June filed a federal complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. The tort claim was a prerequisite for Tuesday’s lawsuit.

Rahman’s attorney, Jessica Gingold of the MacArthur Justice Center, said at a news conference Tuesday that part of the lawsuit’s goal was identifying the agents responsible for the violent attack.

“We will find the names,” Gingold said. “We have their pictures…. We have a right to depose them. We have a right to get their records to understand who these individuals were who heard Aliya, frustrated and confused, and reacted with such violence.”

* This story has been updated to reflect Rahman’s arrest at the State of the Union.

Trump officials are destroying documents related to his pet projects in Washington, D.C., according to whistleblowers.

CNN reports that whistleblowers have warned House Democrats that key documents have already been destroyed before Democrats take over Congress in January. Democratic Representative Jared Huffman, the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, plans to issue letters to the Department of the Interior, as well other federal agencies and private companies involved in the president’s projects, demanding that they “preserve all records and data responsive to oversight.”

Huffman is also sending letters to the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Department of Agriculture, as well as companies such as Lockheed Martin and John Deere, which have donated to Trump’s projects in the past.

The recipients of Huffman’s letters must reply to certify their compliance. This means that they should make efforts to “preserve existing records collections and productions,” as well as “identify and recover any deleted information” and “suspend any destruction and deletion practices.”

“Everything is coming; it’s all coming,” Huffman told CNN. “It’s just going to be an entirely new day.”

Huffman told CNN that his committee could stop some of Trump’s projects, “especially because we have standing to go to court if we have to,” he said. “We’ll have tools to be able to stop a lot of it.”

The Interior Department said that the whistleblowers were “100 percent false,” saying that “the department follows all federal records management obligations as directed by the department’s ethics officials.”

Documents on Trump’s ballroom, his renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, his takeover of the East Potomac Golf Links course, and his triumphal arch could all be at risk.