White House briefs cabinet on subpoenas as party weighs third impeachment
House Democrats are preparing a multi-front oversight agenda targeting the Trump administration should they win the House majority in November, with early investigative targets spanning the administration’s handling of the Iran war, the Trump family’s business dealings, federal immigration enforcement and President Trump’s ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The Wall Street Journal, in interviews with House Democrats and their top aides, identified nearly a dozen early investigative priorities. Lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee are meeting over the summer to finalize their agenda, according to the panel’s ranking member, Rep. Robert Garcia (D., Calif.), who said “Trump corruption and Trump family corruption” would lead the panel’s focus.
The targets include allegations that Trump has profited from the presidency through the Trump family’s foreign business dealings and cryptocurrency ventures, the awarding of contracts to close allies of the president, the construction of a White House ballroom and the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and the actions of federal immigration officials, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Trump has said he isn’t directly involved in the Trump Organization’s decisions and that his sons are running the business day-to-day; the president’s aides have rejected allegations of conflicts of interest.
“I think our top issues are going to be Trump corruption and Trump family corruption,” Garcia said. “Everything to do from the crypto scheme to pay-to-play, selling pardons, obviously the Trump family cutting real estate deals, the defense contracts.”
White House lawyers have briefed cabinet secretaries and top aides on the kinds of subpoenas they could receive and how to respond, according to senior administration officials. A White House official said the administration is always prepared to respond to oversight requests regardless of who controls Congress.
Democrats need to gain just a handful of seats to win the House in the midterm elections, and Republicans are increasingly concerned about retaining their majority. The GOP-controlled Senate is viewed as a tossup, according to people from both parties.
If Democrats win the chamber, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York is expected to become speaker and would be tasked with bridging the divide between progressives pushing for expansive oversight and moderates who prefer a more targeted approach. Jeffries was an impeachment manager in the 2019 Senate trial, which stemmed from accusations that Trump withheld aid from Ukraine unless its government investigated Joe Biden, then his expected political rival.
The question of whether to pursue a third Trump impeachment points to early divisions within the party. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D., Calif.), a member of House Democratic leadership, said there are “literally no meetings that we walk into as Democrats where people are talking about impeaching Donald Trump. I mean, it just doesn’t exist.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who served as lead impeachment manager in the trial that followed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, pushed back. “None of us is afraid of impeachment,” Raskin said, calling it a tool. “Most of the Democratic caucus has voted for impeachment at least once, if not twice.”
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.) said “We saw that movie twice and it didn’t work” and noted that in most trilogies, “the third movie is never good.” Trump was acquitted by the Senate after both previous impeachments, in 2019 and 2021. He lost the 2020 election but won four years later and returned to the White House.
Senior Democrats are also preparing for the possibility that the Trump administration will decline to comply with subpoenas or fight them in court. Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), who chaired the Intelligence Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, said Democrats have discussed issuing subpoenas to outside political allies and companies that have donated to Trump and his favored causes if the White House stonewalls. “I have to think they [the White House] will once again try to stonewall, but here we will have an opportunity to go to the private sector,” Schiff said.
The Justice Department earlier this month said in a memo that executive privilege can apply to “presidential communications with private advisers so long as the communications relate to official presidential decisionmaking,” which Democrats have taken as an indication that the administration is moving to shield matters from congressional oversight.
Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), a potential 2028 presidential contender, proposed a two-track approach, with one set of investigations focused on alleged corruption and the Epstein files, and the other on what she called “very real issues” affecting Americans. “I think we need to have investigations into water and power supply disruptions from data centers,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I think we need to have investigations on healthcare and how monopolies are driving up healthcare costs, tariffs, things like that.”
House Democrats are also weighing forward-looking priorities alongside the investigative agenda — hearings on rising grocery and healthcare costs, and on data centers — that could shape the 2028 election. Any member of Congress can introduce articles of impeachment in the House, and last December Rep. Al Green (D., Texas), who recently lost his primary, forced a vote on impeaching Trump; 140 Democrats voted to advance it. Dozens of House Democrats have called for invoking the 25th Amendment, most recently in response to Trump’s threats last April to destroy Iran’s civilization.