After years of Republicans going to extraordinary lengths to politicize congressional oversight and target President Donald Trump’s enemies, his administration is now issuing stark warnings to Democrats to not politicize congressional oversight to target Trump and those around him.
Twice in recent days, the administration has offered remarkable initial salvos in the looming investigative battles between it and the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress.
During a CNN interview on Sunday, Attorney General Todd Blanche left open the possibility of the Justice Department prosecuting Democratic lawmakers who threaten to investigate Trump administration officials too overzealously.
And on Wednesday, White House counsel Will Scharf issued a letter cautioning the House Oversight Committee against forthcoming investigations and saying the administration “will not be extorted.”
Both are rather rich, considering the recent history of Republicans leveraging governmental power to target Trump’s foes — in ways with little if any modern precedent.
In the Wednesday letter to incoming House Oversight Committee Chair Robert Garcia, Scharf warns that Democrats’ oversight “must further a legitimate legislative task,” rather than trying to serve the criminal-prosecution functions of the executive and judicial branches.
He cites the possibility of “unlawful process motivated by animus, pettiness, hatred, or any other unlawful motive.” He also cites “abusive and capricious threats” from Democratic lawmakers.
(Garcia, a California Democrat, responded by saying the House “will not be deterred by baseless threats from a weaponized DOJ or from the president’s lawyers.”)
Scharf’s letter echoes Blanche’s comments from Sunday. After Trump posted on social media that Democrats’ investigative threats amounted to “extortion at the highest level,” Blanche left open the possibility that the Democrats could be prosecuted for it.
Blanche cited Garcia’s two-word statement to the administration on election night: “LAWYER UP.”
“If that doesn’t bother you, if that doesn’t bother your viewers, then we really need to kind of wake up in this country, because it certainly bothers me,” Blanche told CNN’s Dana Bash.
The GOP has explicitly told Democrats to ‘lawyer up,’ too
But Trump and his allies have issued plenty of very similar threats to Democrats in recent years:
- In 2023, now-FBI Director Kash Patel warned: “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you.”
- Then-Trump Justice Department official Ed Martin in May 2025 amplified a post that stated, “Lawyer up, Lawfare Democrats.”
- GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri in October 2025 urged figures mentioned in the “Arctic Frost” investigation to “lawyer up.”
- Current GOP House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer in January told Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to “lawyer up” over fraud that took place on his watch in Minnesota.
Trump has pursued extensive legal retribution
Still, perhaps the bigger point is this: The administration long ago vacated the moral high ground when it comes to “abusive and capricious threats” of investigations “motivated by animus, pettiness, hatred.”
Trump himself has targeted scores of his political foes, often for non-existent or thinly constructed supposed offenses. And he has repeatedly acknowledged he can’t set aside his hatred of his enemies — including in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired this past weekend.
A November 2025 Reuters investigation found that, in less than a year of Trump’s second term, he had targeted at least 470 people, organizations and institutions for retribution.
Tellingly, his administration has investigated people responsible for virtually every major investigation and court case against Trump.
And the president at one point explicitly signaled he was out not for accountability, but for “retribution.”
“For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he said in March 2023.
His Justice Department has regularly pursued criminal cases against Trump’s foes based on the thinnest of evidence, often at Trump’s urging.
Several of these cases have fallen apart — either because they didn’t clear the typically very low bar of getting a grand jury to vote to indict, or because those investigating the matter clearly couldn’t produce the goods.
That includes:
- Failed indictments against six congressional Democrats (for telling military service members and intelligence officials not to follow illegal orders)
- Multiple failed indictments against New York Attorney General Letitia James
- A failed indictment of January 6 witness Cassidy Hutchinson
- Cases against James and former FBI Director James Comey that were thrown out. (Comey was later re-indicted twice in cases that legal experts are skeptical of)
- A series of failed efforts to legally target Trump’s foes like California Sen. Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook for supposed mortgage issues
- A later-abandoned criminal probe of then-Fed Chair Jerome Powell for cost overruns in a Fed renovation
And despite Trump’s allies having accused the Biden administration of political prosecutions against Trump, there is far more evidence that Trump pushed these probes than there is that former President Joe Biden was involved in getting Trump indicted.
The GOP also politicized congressional oversight, based on little evidence
These are criminal investigations, rather than congressional oversight. But even on congressional investigations, it’s pretty difficult for Republicans to claim they haven’t done what the Trump administration is warning Democrats not to do.
Ahead of an expected 2024 matchup between Trump and Biden, the House GOP launched an impeachment inquiry against Biden that regularly involved overstating evidence of suppose corruption in the “Biden crime family.” One of their central attacks on Biden relied on an unverified claim from an FBI informant who later pleaded guilty to fabricating it.
Republicans ultimately couldn’t even get enough of their own GOP members to vote to impeach Biden, despite not needing any Democratic votes. So the inquiry never served any concrete legislative purpose — the line the Trump administration is now trying to draw with Democrats.
In the same Congress, Republicans also launched a special committee supposedly probing the “weaponization” of government by the Biden administration. It, too, vastly overstated evidence of wrongdoing and went out with a whimper.
Polls show Americans differentiate between the parties’ approaches
Still, the hard-edged front from the Trump administration in recent days at least makes some political sense. Theoretically, the administration could muddy the waters by arguing that Democrats are being overzealous in their intent to scrutinize the administration.
But the polls have suggested that Americans see the difference between how Democrats and Republicans have handled these issues.
While majorities of Americans saw Trump’s indictments as legitimate, polling last year showed Americans said by double digits that the cases against Trump’s foes were politicized and illegitimate.
Americans also took a rather dim view of the Biden impeachment inquiry. And an early 2023 poll showed Americans said by 20 points that the GOP’s “weaponization” committee was mostly “just an attempt to score political points.”
Fast forward to today, and Americans see plenty that’s worthwhile for the Democratic-controlled Congress to investigate.
Recent polling has shown around two-thirds of Americans say that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and that he has inappropriately profited. And an AP-NORC poll before the election showed 6 in 10 Americans wanted the next Congress to make investigating the Trump administration a priority.
Of course, it is possible the Democrats could go too far with that — just 36 percent wanted it to be one of the party’s highest priorities — but there is no shortage of real targets that could produce results.
And that’s what the Trump administration seems to fear.
