In the late hours Tuesday, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., issued an all-caps, two-word post on X: “LAWYER UP.”

Garcia, the expected chair of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for the next Congress, was sending a not-so-subtle message to potential targets of investigations: Keep your attorneys on speed dial.

But Garcia’s post can also be read as a reminder to the House itself as it begins to organize for the 120th Congress under speaker-in-waiting Hakeem Jeffries: We’re going to need a best-of-class lawyer ourselves.

As the House contemplates oversight investigations and even potential impeachment inquiries, it will need its own, skilled counsel to navigate hotly contested battles with the White House and executive agencies.

That means Jeffries’ selection of the next general counsel of the House could be as consequential as Democratic members’ votes for people to fill out his leadership team.

The House general counsel is a nonpartisan official who, along with a team of lawyers and staff they supervise, provides legal advice and assistance to members, committees, officers and employees of the House.

But that description obscures the complex, sometimes messy political brawls that person often is embroiled in. Questions of constitutional authority, the scope of various privileges and requests for information to and from executive agencies all fall within the House general counsel’s bailiwick; so too does any litigation the House itself is a party to, on either side.

And with a combative Donald Trump in the White House for two more years, experts say the House will need to litigate proactively — and aggressively — to enforce its subpoenas and statutory and constitutional rights. Those fights will occur in real courthouses and in the court of public opinion alike, to determine who is required to testify and produce documents — and on whose timing.

There’s no doubt that the role could be a consequential one.

The question facing Hakeem Jeffries now is who the best person to fill it is, midway through Trump 2.0, and as Democrats grapple with how to meet high expectations for both their legislative and investigative agendas.

A former senior Justice Department official, who spoke to MS NOW on condition of anonymity because of fears of reprisal, said they believe the House needs an accomplished appellate litigator, noting that one or more of these fights could land at the Supreme Court.

“You’ve got to go to court knowing where it ends,” they said.

But others highlighted the need for political acumen over legal expertise.

Asked what kind of lawyer they thought would be best suited to the House job, a lawyer familiar with the search, who requested anonymity to protect their relationships with House Democrats, noted that the House is a legislative body, not a prosecutor’s office.

The type of investigations House committees will undertake, they said, “are fact-finding missions but also political. And you need someone who understands the communications and theater aspects.”

They also said that whoever Jeffries selects, they hope it is “someone who will put their name out there to fight.”

Timothy Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney in Virginia who served as chief investigative counsel for the House Jan. 6 committee, agreed, adding that lists of lawyers interested in serving a Congress controlled by Democrats are already being assembled.

In the past, Heaphy recalled, if Congress wanted information from an administration, there would be “horse trading” between the two. But that feels less likely now; whoever steps into the “crucial role” of House general counsel may need a greater appetite — and skill — for litigation, as opposed to negotiation.

Many of those under consideration, Heaphy added, are former Justice Department prosecutors. Some were even fired by or forced out of the DOJ over the past two years.

Luckily, Heaphy observed, there is a “perfect storm” of jobs for lawyers in a Congress controlled by Democrats, “and the people with the chops to do it.”

A fight likely to be taken up will almost certainly involve a complicated question: What can be withheld, given the Trump administration’s penchant for asserting executive privilege?

Despite its seeming bullishness about the midterms, the administration has been preparing for this moment for months.

In August the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opined that the president’s executive privilege extended to communications with advisers outside government so long as they relate to official presidential decision-making, involve or reflect communications with the president or his direct advisers, and are confidential.

So, it seems, it is this Justice Department’s policy that executive privilege can prevent Congress from learning about conversations between, for example, Stephen Miller and Elon Musk if they relate to “presidential decision-making.”

The Trump administration’s idea of executive privilege has taken breathtaking scope in ongoing litigation over the president’s intent to transform a Washington, D.C., golf course. At a recent hearing, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward refused to discuss his understanding of a social media post by President Trump, insisting that even his impressions of what Trump meant were covered by executive privilege.

Those interpretations of executive privilege, among others, could become a major impediment to the kind of investigations the House is considering, and will likely culminate in a “fundamental battle over executive privilege,” according to the former senior Justice Department official.

And that’s where the House general counsel comes in.

The last time the Democrats controlled the House while Trump was in the Oval Office was during Nancy Pelosi’s tenure as speaker. Her chosen general counsel, Douglas Letter, came out of retirement after decades of service at the Justice Department, during which he presented over 200 oral arguments. Letter also served as an associate White House counsel during the Clinton administration, enabling him to anticipate and react to some of the White House’s legal maneuvers.

History reflects that he called on that experience. Among the matters he litigated on behalf of the House and its committees were some of the most significant fights of the first Trump administration, about evidence of wrongdoing or potentially criminal conduct.

Letter led the fight over whether and to what extent communications between lawyer John Eastman and Trump campaign staff were protected by the attorney-client privilege. In order to overcome that assertion, Letter argued — well before Jack Smith undertook his own criminal investigation — that the House Jan. 6 committee had “a good-faith basis for concluding that [Trump] and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

Letter also clashed with the Biden White House and representatives of then-former President Trump over whether former White House counsel Don McGahn was immune from testifying to Congress over Trump’s alleged efforts to obstruct the Mueller investigation. Ultimately, McGahn testified before the House Judiciary Committee.

And Letter prevailed in a yearslong battle with Trump that even reached the Supreme Court over the House Ways and Means Committee’s entitlement to Trump’s tax returns, access that is expressly provided to that committee by federal statute.

The post In a new Congress, one of the most important jobs will be one you’ve never heard of: House general counsel appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.