Democrats said they plan to investigate President Donald Trump and his allies and pursue the impeachment of top officials after winning control of Congress.
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a Nov. 3 post on X that current and former top officials, including former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and current border czar Tom Homan, should clear their schedules.
“They are going to need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, wrote in another post on X.
“For those who have tried to exploit and enrich themselves, we are going to hold them accountable,” Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the House Democratic whip, told supporters in Washington late Tuesday.
When Democrats take control of both legislative chambers in January, they can nominate committee leaders and control who receives subpoenas. Defying congressional subpoenas can result in criminal charges.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who expects to become the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in a two-word statement, “lawyer up.”
Garcia has pledged to investigate Trump and the president’s family members, alleged corruption by corporations, the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and how officials have handled files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“ICE and DHS are completely out of control. They are terrorizing communities. They are, in some cases, killing people on the streets of American cities.” Garcia told reporters in October.
“They are kidnapping folks who are just here trying to do their jobs. They are separating families. They are deporting people to other countries, some of which they’ve never been to. And they have created a pipeline of deportation and detention, where you have a small number of corporations and billionaires who are benefiting from every single deportation.”
Some Democrats also said they support moving to impeach top officials, including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said on CBS in October that ousting Hegseth would be his number one priority if Democrats flipped the House.
“He’s failed at his job–and left our servicemembers behind,” Crow said on X on Tuesday. “He’s got to go.”
The White House did not respond to an early morning request for comment.
A White House spokeswoman told news outlets recently, “Democrats have no agenda to improve the lives of Americans; their only agenda is to continue their decade-long witch hunt against President Trump.”
Trump said in a podcast released ahead of the election that he would consider using preemptive pardons to protect former and current officials, including businessman Elon Musk.
“We just have to protect those people,” he said.
In a call on a Politico show on Tuesday night, Trump said that he is open to working with Democrats, some of whom he counts as friends.
Trump also said that he will still have the power of veto and that if Democrats put forth legislation that is not good, he would veto it.
“They’re going to come back and say, ‘How do we get it done?’ And we’ll see if we can get something done,” he said.
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