House Democrats detail probes into Trump family, Epstein files and the Pentagon

Phang lawsuit targets Justice Department disclosure; Raskin seeks Kushner details

Democrats are fighting to win control of the House and Senate in the 2026 midterms, and The Guardian’s explainer examines what winning either chamber could mean for Democrats and Donald Trump. Political reporter Joseph Gedeon laid out the most consequential investigations Democrats could launch if they take back Congress, and the first concerns the Trump family’s business. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, has ranked Trump family corruption first on his list of priorities, while Representative Jamie Raskin has requested information on the business dealings of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and son Donald Trump Jr.

Image caption: House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on March 27, 2026. Photograph: Samuel Corum/Getty Images.

Colorado Congressman Jason Crow, who sits on the armed services and intelligence committees and co-chairs the House End Corruption Caucus, said he would start with the Pentagon, citing reports of defense money steered toward companies linked to the Trump family.

The Epstein files carry a recent history of their own. Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie forced the Department of Justice to release millions of files related to Jeffrey Epstein last year, but the department missed the legally mandated deadline to disclose them. It then released only about 3.5 million of the 6 million pages in its possession, saying it had deemed the rest duplicates.

Bipartisan concern has followed the release. There has been bipartisan consternation about heavy redactions in some places, and what The Guardian described as the apparently accidental disclosure of the names of victims in other places. The Justice Department is now facing a lawsuit from journalist Katie Phang over many of these issues.

Even under a Republican-controlled Congress, the House oversight committee under its GOP chair, James Comer, has been a rare spot of bipartisan cooperation, with members of both sides routinely — but not always — acting in concert to subpoena witnesses and hold them in contempt when they do not cooperate. The Guardian expects that pattern to continue in any new Democratic Congress.

A Democratic House majority might also come under pressure from its support base to impeach Trump for a third time. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats have ruled nothing out regarding impeachment this time around, while the Republican House majority leader, Steve Scalise, predicts an attempt on “Day 1”.

Beyond the investigations, control of the chambers would reshape how much legislation can pass. If Democrats take the House, Republicans would lose their ability to pass legislation through that chamber without Democratic support. A Democratic majority could launch investigations into the administration, demand documents and testimony, and subject senior officials to sustained congressional scrutiny.

If Democrats take the Senate, the chamber’s confirmation powers would give them leverage over Trump administration appointments. The Senate confirms cabinet officials, ambassadors and federal judges, including Supreme Court nominees. A Democratic majority could block or delay many of Trump’s appointments, and force the White House to negotiate over legislation, The Guardian said.

If Republicans retain one or both chambers, a reduced majority could still make governing more difficult, particularly when legislation requires near-unanimous support from the party’s own members, The Guardian said.

The source offered a precedent from Trump’s first term. Democrats flipped the House in 2018, halfway through his term, in what The Guardian described as a sweeping blue wave, and House committees quickly launched dozens of inquiries into his businesses, his handling of the Russia probes and possible conflicts of interest.

Just over a year after the 2018 midterms, and after months of calls for impeachment from the left, the House voted mostly on party lines to impeach Trump. Democrats accused him of pursuing a scheme to cheat in the upcoming presidential election by pressuring Ukraine to manufacture bad news about Joe Biden and then blocking congressional oversight. Trump was later acquitted in the Republican-controlled Senate on both articles of impeachment.

In 2021, Trump was impeached — and acquitted — a second time for inciting the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, The Guardian said. That was the most recent historical episode in the source’s account of the current debate over a possible third impeachment.

The Guardian’s assessment was that if Democrats win back the House or the Senate in the midterm elections, the final two years of Trump’s presidency will look markedly different from the first half. Representative Jamie Raskin has already requested information about Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr.’s business dealings, and Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie already forced the Justice Department to release millions of Epstein files last year. Those completed steps do not depend on the election result; only prospective probes under a Democratic House do. The disclosure fight over the Epstein files remains pending in the courts through Katie Phang’s lawsuit.