Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, who is expected to soon lead the House Oversight Committee, has made no effort to hide his ambitious investigative agenda in the upcoming Congress. On the contrary, the Californian spent much of last week encouraging leading Trump administration officials, including new White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, to “lawyer up.”

In a normal administration, this would be about the time that the White House counsel’s office would start preparing for the kind of routine congressional scrutiny and oversight that Donald Trump and his team haven’t had to worry about over the past two years. In the incumbent administration, White House counsel Will Scharf is approaching the changing circumstances in a far more aggressive fashion.

In a new letter to Garcia — which was dated Monday but reached the public two days later — the White House’s top lawyer didn’t just push back against the oversight efforts that haven’t started yet; Scharf also appeared to threaten the Democratic congressman. From the written correspondence:

We are monitoring the abusive and capricious threats that are now proliferating from Democrat legislators who seek to abuse the legislative process to intimidate and to interfere with the lawful functioning of government. […]

Beyond being inconsistent with the clear, well-recognized constitutional limitations on your investigative functions, threats to executive branch officials designed to deter them from public service, or process designed merely to abuse or instill fear in the recipient may cross the line into blatant criminality, and issuing unlawful subpoenas with the intention of depriving citizens of their constitutional rights and privileges may warrant further investigation.

In other words, as the incoming Democratic majority prepares to exercise its oversight authority over the administration, the White House is threatening the incoming chair of the Oversight Committee, while raising the prospect of Team Trump investigating the investigators.

By way of a response, Garcia said in a written statement, “It appears Donald Trump has something to hide. 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.

“The American people voted overwhelmingly for us to pass laws to root out corruption and abuse. The Trump Administration continues to weaponize the government with threats of unconstitutional attacks on Congress. We are a co-equal branch of government and will not be deterred by baseless threats from a weaponized DOJ or from the president’s lawyers.”

Stepping back, it’s worth appreciating just how panicky the president and his team have become when confronted with the possibility of congressional investigations that remain on the horizon.

As recently as Saturday, for example, Trump responded to oversight that hasn’t yet begun with furious rants published to his social media platform in which he accused Democrats of “extortion,” “weaponization” and “lawfare.” In the same online tantrum, the president called for Democratic lawmakers’ “imprisonment” and ordered the Justice Department to “look into” the Democrats’ “criminal” and “totally illegal” actions.

None of this made any sense, though in the days that followed, Attorney General Todd Blanche nevertheless suggested that congressional leaders who conduct oversight investigations could be criminally prosecuted. The Republican lawyer added that the Justice Department would represent administration officials who came under scrutiny, which really isn’t how the process is supposed to work.

Now the White House counsel’s office has joined the pushback.

Let’s not forget, Trump and his team could very easily say, “Democrats can investigate anything they want, but they won’t uncover any wrongdoing in my administration.”

Except they’ve said nothing of the kind. Instead, the emerging picture is of a White House that appears absolutely terrified of questions Team Trump and its allies apparently don’t want to answer.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post White House counsel pushes back against Democratic oversight in latest sign of panic appeared first on MS NOW.

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