Attorney General Todd Blanche suggested Sunday that Democratic lawmakers who are planning to launch oversight investigations into the Trump administration could be criminally prosecuted.

“What we‘ve seen over the past several days and even over the past several weeks are outright threats,” Blanche said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Asked if he considered those threats to be a crime, Blanche said, “It depends on what’s said. So yes, there could be.”

Blanche himself is a potential target of impeachment, Rep. Jamie Raskin, who is poised to become chair of the House Judiciary Committee, told MS NOW a day after Election Day. Pete Hegseth is another top target of impeachment, with Republican support.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who will become speaker if elected by fellow Democrats in January, has told MS NOW his party will “hold the crooks accountable.”

On Sunday, he said he’s a “hard yes” on a resolution to impeach the defense secretary. “Pete Hegseth has got to go,” Jeffries said, accusing him of abusing his power, undermining national security and engineering a “reckless and costly war of choice in Iran.”

Blanche’s stark warning of potential retaliation came a day after President Donald Trump railed against the incoming congressional majority on social media, saying, “These SLEAZEBAGS should go to jail for what they are doing.”

“You have free speech in this country. You are allowed to be critical of President Trump, of me, of this administration,” Blanche said. “But when the threats become so vile and so dangerous that you are telling people in college that they better be careful if they want to work in the Trump administration because somebody will come after them, at some point, you have to draw the line.”

The attorney general was referring to Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s “deterrence message” last month to students at the University of Chicago. Slotkin was among a group of Democratic lawmakers investigated by the Department of Justice last year after urging U.S. military service members to “refused illegal orders” by Trump administration officials.

Even before winning both chambers of Congress five days ago by strikingly large numbers, Democrats had said they planned to hold Trump and his administration officials accountable for actions ranging from lethal military strikes and immigration tactics to no-bid contracts and federal constructions projects, including the White House ballroom and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

But after winning decisively, their plans came into full view.

“Lawyer up,” Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement issued hours after winning the majority.

Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney who has led persistent Justice Department efforts to prosecute the president’s political enemies — including Former FBI Director James Comey — addressed Garcia’s warning.

“Department of Justice lawyers represent members of the executive, and the fact that Congressman Garcia is critical of that shows a remarkable lack of understanding of how government works,” Blanche said on CNN. “And I would be very worried if I was a member on that committee.”

But not all Democrats are excited by the prospect of holding congressional corruption investigations into the Trump administration.

Sen.-elect Adam Hamilton, the Democrat who won a major upset in Kansas, said Sunday he would rather focus on stopping Trump’s tariffs and war and helping farmers in his state who are struggling to afford fertilizer and diesel.

“If I spend the next two years – my first two years in the Senate — in investigations, I’d be deeply disappointed,” Hamilton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. Pressed on whether he thought impeachment of Trump should be on the table, he said, “I’m not as interested in impeachment as setting guard rails.”

“I don’t want to see us spend the next two years dividing our country further,” Hamilton said.

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