Democrats Don’t Take Over Until January. They’re Already Telling Trump’s Team to ‘Lawyer Up.’

Democrats won’t hold a single committee gavel until January. They are already printing the threats.

“LAWYER UP,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California posted on Nov. 3, election night. Garcia is in line to run the House Oversight Committee, the chamber’s main investigative panel, with the power to drag witnesses and documents in by subpoena. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts went further: “They are going to need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing,” he posted the same day, according to USA Today.

On Sunday the target list got names. Garcia told CNN’s “State of the Union” that Elon Musk and Stephen Miller, Trump’s new White House chief of staff, are likely in the crosshairs. “I think there’s a lot of interest, not just from our committee, but from committees across the Congress to speak to Mr. Musk,” he said, according to Reuters. He called Miller “the architect of this horrific, unjust policy,” meaning Trump’s immigration enforcement, and told The Washington Post that Trump’s is “the most corrupt family to ever be in the Oval Office.”

Hegseth first

The man who will be speaker in January, Hakeem Jeffries, picked his first target too. On ABC’s “This Week,” Jeffries said he is a “hard yes” on a resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which outgoing Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky says he will reintroduce. “Pete Hegseth has got to go,” Jeffries said, blaming him for the Iran war.

Hegseth brushed it off in a video, calling the push “all about the politics of personal destruction,” the AP reported. And the math is not on Democrats’ side: the House can impeach with a simple majority, but removing anyone takes two-thirds of the Senate, which Democrats cannot reach without a big bloc of Republicans.

Trump: ‘Extortion at the highest level’

Trump hit back Saturday on Truth Social. “The Democrats are going around threatening a lot of people, including the Attorney General of the United States, and others, with Impeachment and many other forms of punishment, even though they admit they have no reason to do so,” he wrote. “This is extortion at the highest level, and they should be held accountable for this.”

He said Democrats are also “threatening our Donors” with prison “just because they happen to be Republicans,” and called it “Weaponization and Lawfare at another level.” He closed with an order: “I am ordering the Department of Justice to look into this criminal act, immediately!”

Trump did not name the letters he said were sent, who received them or what law was broken, CNBC noted. Attorney General Todd Blanche went on CNN and Fox News Sunday. He agreed Congress has the power to investigate but said Democrats’ rhetoric had crossed a line, and he singled out Garcia’s “lawyer up” warning. “I would be very worried if I was a member on that committee,” Blanche told CNN, according to Axios. He did not say an investigation had been opened.

Garcia answered that Democrats won’t back down. “The days of us not fighting back are over,” he said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Even some Democrats want to slow down

Not every Democrat thinks voters sent them to Washington to run a two-year investigation. Democrats themselves say high prices and the Iran war are what beat Republicans last week.

“We cannot spend all of our time investigating Trump,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the independent who votes with Democrats, according to the AP. Kansas Sen.-elect Adam Hamilton said he is “not as interested in impeachment as setting up guardrails.”

That is the warning sign for the new majority. Voters asked for lower bills. The first thing they’re hearing from Democratic leaders is subpoenas, impeachment and “lawyer up.”

What happens next

For now Republicans still run both chambers. Congress returns Monday for a lame-duck session with six weeks of work, starting with a bill to keep the government open past Dec. 11. Democrats take over on Jan. 3, and Garcia’s subpoenas can’t go out before then.