Family wealth, Epstein, ‘vanity projects’: How Democrats plan to investigate Trump after midterms
Throughout President Donald Trump’s second term, Democratic lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Congress have been frustrated in their efforts to investigate what they see as rampant corruption and abuse of power in the White House.
That will change if, as polls suggest, the Democratic Party wins one or both chambers of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections, securing broad powers to launch probes and hold hearings into the conduct of administration officials.
Live coverageVoters head to the polls for election that could upend Trump presidency
Democrats have long pointed to multiple ethical concerns and conflicts of interest during Trump’s second term, in which the personal wealth of the president and his family has ballooned.
In the run-up to the November vote, senior Democrats have made no secret of their plans to go after the Trump administration’s policies, the conduct of its personnel, and ties between government officials and private corporations that have sought to wield influence with the White House.
A Democratic majority in either the House or the Senate would be armed with control of committees, bigger budgets and staff, and subpoena powers that could compel the Trump administration to be responsive to Congress.
Family businesses, Epstein files
Trump family’s business dealings and broader allegations of corporate corruption will be a top priority for California Representative Robert Garcia, who is set to lead the powerful House Oversight Committee if Democrats win the chamber.
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Garcia has published a tracker of how Trump and his family have profited during his second term. He recently told the Washington Post, “there’s so much corruption and grift that it’s going to take the entire House on the Democratic side to do investigations appropriately”.
Democrats have already requested information on the business dealings of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, citing his dual roles as an informal foreign policy adviser to the president and the head of a private equity firm that does business with foreign governments. They are also pushing for investigations into the Trump family’s massive investments in the crypto industry and whether crypto investments provided an avenue for foreign interests to influence the president.
Trump's ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein will also be a focus of Democratic lawmakers, who are pushing for an investigation into whether the Justice Department violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act by withholding or improperly redacting documents.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who would return to the role of majority leader if Democrats capture the Senate, has already laid the groundwork by creating a special Senate working group in February to plumb Epstein-related information held back from the public by the Trump Justice Department.
Linking corruption and inflation
As they pursue the Republican administration, Democrats will be aware that they must balance their desire to inflict retribution on Trump with the need to address the immediate concerns of US voters angered by surging prices.
“More than 90 percent of voters think that government has been corrupted. We just have to be thoughtful and strategic about where investigative work goes and not allow that to distract us from solving fairly immediate cost problems that American families feel,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a likely chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee if Democrats capture the chamber, told The Hill on the eve of the vote.
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His Senate colleague Ron Wyden, who is hoping to head the Finance Committee, has prioritised issues of corruption and affordability in congressional probes.
"Private equity is a big focus of a lot of the Senate members, the way financial structures in private equity might affect healthcare costs, housing, and other essentials like that," Daniel Goshorn, the Democrats’ chief investigative counsel on the Finance Committee, told an event at Mayer Brown law firm last week. "Taxation of data centres and responding to the public outcry" around artificial intelligence will also be a focus, he added.
Democrats are also certain to highlight what they regard as Trump’s wasteful spending as they investigate his so-called “vanity projects” in the US capital, including the president’s troubled Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the 90,000-square-foot (8,360-square-meter) White House ballroom funded, in part, by donations from longtime donors and friends.
Representative Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee that oversees all federal lands, recently told Time he would probe whether Trump followed the necessary approval process for the projects and whether donors to the ballroom project received favourable treatment from the administration.
No impeachment, yet
Many Democrats will also be wary of pursuing an unprecedented third impeachment against Trump, who was impeached twice in his first term in office but acquitted by the Senate both times.
The US president has teased his political rivals on the subject, telling supporters at a recent rally in Oklahoma: “I’ve become very good at beating them in impeachment.”
Democrats have learned from Trump’s first term that impeachment proceedings can consume Congress while allowing the president to cast himself as the victim of a partisan campaign. Some have signalled they may go after top cabinet members instead, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, one of Trump’s most stridently loyal officials who has played a key role in the Iran war.
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“I'm here to say, one of the first things we’re going to do in the majority, we’re going to run Pete Hegseth out of town,” minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, a potential House speaker, said at an October rally.
Other Democrats want to prioritise investigations of the Defense Department and the awarding of lucrative contracts linked to Donald Trump Jr.
Senators Elizabeth Warren, Andy Kim and Richard Blumenthal wrote to Hegseth earlier this year demanding information about decisions at the Pentagon to give loans and contracts to companies “associated with the president’s son” that may have had “conflicts of interest”.
In the House, Garcia has also sought records from Trump Jr. detailing his relationship with Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, who helped bankroll his May wedding in the Bahamas.
White House obstruction
In preparation for a possible Democratic onslaught, White House lawyers have been briefing political appointees and agency leaders on how to handle inquiries, document requests and subpoenas, Trump administration officials have told Reuters. They have notably advised officials to be careful about what they put in writing.
The White House is expected to reprise its strategy from the first Trump administration, when it slow-walked congressional requests for documents and testimony and asserted executive privilege over certain information. And while congressional investigations can force individuals to testify and turn over evidence, the Justice Department will remain under Trump’s control, meaning actual criminal charges are a long shot.
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Anticipating White House resistance to oversight, Democratic lawmakers are planning to investigate private entities with ties to Trump, hoping to circumvent the administration’s attempts at obstruction.
Goshorn, the Finance Committee counsel, said banks may receive requests for information if the Trump administration does not cooperate. “Financial institutions are going to be identified as repositories of information that may help Congress achieve its oversight goals without going through the front door,” he added.
Scrutiny of presidential pardons
Democrats are also planning to hit back at Trump’s latest threat to issue pre-emptive pardons for allies.
Asked in a New York Post podcast on Monday if he’d pardon “everybody who worked for you”, Trump responded: “I would not even think about it – I'd do it.”
The US president recalled that he pardoned 1,500 supporters convicted or facing trial over the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, on his first day in office. He suggested he could move to “protect” key ally Elon Musk, the world's richest man, who has donated nearly half a billion dollars to Republican candidates in Tuesday’s election.
Reuters reported this month that Trump has pardoned scores of US public officials charged with or convicted of crimes related to corruption, with a vast majority of recipients being Republicans or vocal proponents of his MAGA movement.
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Democrats have vowed to investigate such pardons more closely and scrutinise donations that wealthy individuals and families made in hopes of receiving clemency.
The New York Times reported that Alina Habba Mildon, one of Trump’s former lawyers, earned $50 million to help secure a pardon for the member of a wealthy Venezuelan family, among other duties. Democrats are also keen to probe the president’s pardon of Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty to violating money-laundering law.
Towards the end of his first term, Trump notoriously commuted the 40-month prison sentence of his long-time associate Roger Stone, who had been convicted by a jury of felony crimes involving lying to Congress and witness tampering relating to the investigation of Russian ties to Trump’s 2016 campaign. The move generated strong congressional condemnation from members of both parties, including Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who called it “unprecedented, historic corruption”.
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