Democrats Promised Subpoenas ‘Like Candy.’ Trump’s Lawyer Answered With Two Supreme Court Cases.

House Democrats spent the week after the midterms promising subpoenas by the truckload. The White House answered with a three-page letter and two Supreme Court cases.

White House Counsel Will Scharf sent the letter on Monday, Nov. 9, to Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee and its likely chairman come January. It doesn’t ask for anything. It reminds him what the Constitution already says.

“I write to remind you of the foundational limits that the Constitution imposes on congressional investigations and subpoenas,” Scharf opens, “which you and members of the new Congress have evinced a clear intent to transgress.”

The signed letter was first reported by Punchbowl News before ABC, CBS and others obtained it, according to CourtNews.

Two cases Democrats know by heart

Scharf leans on two rulings. The first is Watkins v. United States, from 1957, where the Supreme Court said “investigations conducted solely for the personal aggrandizement of the investigators or to ‘punish’ those investigated are indefensible.”

The second is Trump v. Mazars, the 2020 case that grew out of House Democrats’ last run at the president’s finances. In that case the Court held that congressional subpoenas for a president’s information raise serious separation-of-powers concerns, and that Congress has to show a legitimate legislative purpose. Scharf’s summary: Congress “cannot employ them to exercise powers of criminal prosecution assigned to the Executive and the Judiciary.”

Put simply, Congress can investigate to write laws. It can’t investigate to punish people it doesn’t like. That isn’t a Trump talking point. It’s been the law for decades. And the last time House Democrats took a president’s records all the way to the Supreme Court, in Mazars, the justices sent the case back with a tougher test.

“These principles require Congress to identify a legitimate legislative purpose underlying its investigative acts,” the letter says. “Failure to do so in this context represents a clear abuse of power and an affront to our constitutional system of government and to the rule of law.”

‘Candy,’ ‘Mardi Gras beads’ and forests

What set this off was the way Democrats have been talking. Garcia told officials on MS NOW that they “should lawyer up,” according to the letter’s footnotes. Scharf writes that other Democrats “have compared their subpoena pledges to handing out ‘candy,’ ‘Mardi Gras beads,’ and enough paper to level forests.”

That’s the problem in their own words. A subpoena is supposed to be a serious tool used for a serious reason. When lawmakers brag about handing them out like beads at a parade, they are telling you the point is the show, not the legislation.

Scharf says exactly that. The “indiscriminate issuance of subpoenas, along with threats directed at prospective targets within the Administration make it abundantly clear that any forthcoming investigative processes will be deployed to harass and aggrandize, rather than to advance any legitimate legislative end.”

Where the letter draws the line

The sharpest part comes near the end. Threats aimed at executive branch officials “designed to deter them from public service,” Scharf writes, “or process designed merely to abuse or instill fear in the recipient may cross the line into blatant criminality.” Issuing unlawful subpoenas meant to deprive citizens of their constitutional rights “may warrant further investigation.”

Note the word “may.” The letter doesn’t accuse anyone of a crime today. It’s a warning about where the line sits, before a single subpoena has gone out.

And it closes with a promise. “The Administration will not be extorted and will not be cowed by unlawful process motivated by animus, pettiness, hatred, or any other unlawful motive to intimidate, penalize, or interfere with the lawful functioning of government.”

The letter didn’t come out of nowhere. Two days earlier, on Nov. 7, President Trump posted that Democrats’ threatened investigations amounted to “extortion” and said he was “ordering the Department of Justice to look into this criminal act,” according to a client memo from the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. The next day, Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department would represent administration officials who get called before Congress.

That last part matters for anyone in the administration wondering what January looks like. They won’t be walking into hearings alone.

Garcia’s answer

Garcia didn’t back off. He told reporters Congress gets its investigative power from Article I of the Constitution, not from White House permission, according to CourtNews, and he posted his answer on 𝕏 Wednesday.

Notice what he says there. Oversight “that informs legislation.” That’s the same test Scharf is pointing to. If Garcia’s committee keeps to it, there’s no fight. If it turns into the subpoena carnival his colleagues have been advertising, the White House has now told him, in writing, where it will push back.

A Garcia spokesperson said Wednesday morning the committee hadn’t formally received the letter, according to CourtNews. It has certainly read it by now.

Democrats don’t take the gavel until January. The White House just made sure they’ll walk in knowing exactly where the Constitution stops them.