As White House and House Dems trade barbs about planned investigations, experts say Robert Garcia is on solid legal ground, partly because lawmakers have immunity for legislative acts

(KHOU)

Robert Garcia (D-CA) this week received a letter from White House counsel Will Scharf, hinting at possible criminal probes if Democrats move forward with investigative activities against the Trump administration. Garcia, the incoming House Oversight Committee chair, revealed that he does not scare easily -- perhaps because he stands on much firmer legal ground than does Scharf. Garcia also likely knows the Trump White House has a history of issuing threatening letters that bark but never seem to bite. 

Garcia responded to Scharf's missive by firing back a rejoinder that likely landed too close to home for Trumpian comfort. More importantly, Garcia made it clear he and his fellow House Dems plan to proceed with their investigative plans. In the process, Garcia displayed the kind of cool that might make him a strong candidate to be U.S. attorney general in a future Democratic administration.

 The UK Guardian provides analysis of the repartee under the headline "Democrat says Trump 'has something to hide' after White House threatens oversight efforts; White House warns pledges to investigate president 'may cross line into blatant criminality.'" Joseph Gedeon writes:

The incoming Democratic chair of the powerful congressional oversight committee said it appears Donald Trump has “something to hide” after the White House threatened criminal investigations over the party’s planned scrutiny of the administration.

Robert Garcia, ranking member of the oversight committee in the House of Representatives, vowed to press on in the face of what he called “baseless threats” after receiving a letter from White House counsel William Scharf which warned that Democratic pledges to investigate the president “may cross the line into blatant criminality”.

Scharf argued that congressional inquiries need a legitimate legislative purpose and cannot be used to punish targets or lay the ground for prosecutions. 

Garcia fired back promptly, noting that the U.S. Constitution lands firmly on his side, building a strong case that the White House letter was indeed just a baseless threat. Gedeon reports:

Garcia said in a statement that Congress’s authority comes from article I of the constitution, “not from the permission of the White House”. He described that power as inherent in the job of writing laws.

“The American people voted overwhelmingly for us to pass laws to root out corruption and abuse,” Garcia said on Wednesday, accusing the administration of continuing to weaponize the government with “threats of unconstitutional attacks on Congress”.

Corruption became a key issue in last week’s midterm elections. While the economy was the issue voters named most often as the country’s top problem in the NBC News exit poll, 90% of voters said corruption was a crucial or major factor in their votes.

According to a report at Spectrum News, Democrats already have prepared a vast oversight agenda that points in a number of directions, including:

(1) What steps did Trump take to allow him and his family to become wealthier since his return to office?

(2) Has the administration unlawfully blocked release of documents from the Epstein files, and what information has been covered up?

(3) How did Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) come to operate in a way that led to assaults and killings of U.S. citizens and the detention of individuals without due process, allowing them to be sent to countries where they had no ties?

(4) How did Trump unilaterally launch construction of a White House ballroom and other "vanity projects," apparently without notice to, or approval from, Congress?

(5) What was the Trump family's role in mineral deals, plus Trump's crypto dealings with special envoy Steve Witkoff?

A reasonable person might ask, "Why would Trump officials be surprised at being investigated, given all the signs of rampant corruption during the second term? If they wanted to avoid such scrutiny, why didn't  they conduct themselves in an ethical manner. Instead, the public received reports of one scandal after another. Now, we need answers and accountability. Democrats are setting up a plan to provide what the public seeks, Gedeon writes:

Having promised during the campaign to tackle those issues, Democrats won back control of both chambers of Congress, and will arrive in January with their largest House majority since 2008. Trump wrote on social media that he was not responsible for the Republican losses, and later posted an image of a cap embroidered with the word “veto”.

Scharf’s letter also pointed to public remarks by incoming Democratic lawmakers. It said the Representative-elect Richard Ojeda of North Carolina wants to see defense secretary Pete Hegseth “squirm”, that Texas representative-elect Katy Padilla Stout told witnesses to “put makeup on for the cameras” and that Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona described accountability as eventually ending in jail. It also took aim at Garcia’s “Lawyer Up” campaign, saying his intent was “not to legislate, but to intimidate”. 

Does any of that point to criminal violations? Are House Democrats required by law to use delicate language in discussing oversight plans, so as not to offend White House sensibilities? The answers, Garcia says, is no. From The Guardian's report:

Garcia was unmoved. “We are a co-equal branch of government and will not be deterred by baseless threats from a weaponized DoJ or from the president’s lawyers,” he said.

How have legal experts responded to the back and forth between White House counsel and House Democrats?  According to the Los Angeles Times, those who have followed the war of words closely are suspect about the White House approach:

Josh Chafetz, a Georgetown University law professor who studies Congress’ constitutional powers, called Scharf's letter “completely laughable.”

“I have never seen anyone suggest that members of Congress could be held criminally liable for how they use their oversight power,” Chafetz said.

He noted that the three-page letter, with a dozen footnotes, does not specify which law Democrats may be violating.

“What crime?” Chafetz said. “What provision of federal law might they have violated? He doesn’t even gesture towards one.” 

Scharf's letter cited U.S. Supreme Court rulings holding that congressional investigations must serve a legislative purpose. Chafetz, however, said those cases don’t support Scharf’s argument. 

“Legislative purpose is incredibly broad. Almost anything has a legislative purpose,” he said. “Certainly, investigating wrongdoing in the executive branch is a core legislative purpose.”

And even if a court found an investigation lacked a legislative purpose, Chafetz said the target could refuse to comply with a subpoena but it would not mean the lawmakers committed a crime. 

In a report at The New York Times, experts said Scharf's "blatant criminality language" is legally dubious. One reason? The Constitution grants lawmakers immunity for legislative acts:

Peter M. Shane, who teaches public law at the New York University School of Law and is an author of a separation-of-powers casebook, criticized Mr. Scharf’s threat as legally baseless, saying, “Our Constitution protects legislators from the threat of criminal prosecution while performing official duties as an essential bulwark to repel executive overreach and defend checks and balances.”

He continued: “Congressional oversight and the issuance of subpoenas by definition cannot be the focus of legitimate criminal prosecution. It may be that an occasional subpoena may be quashed as outside the committee’s jurisdiction or for some other reason, but that is not a criminal offense.”

The parts of Mr. Scharf’s letter about the scope and limits of legitimate congressional oversight cited court precedents. The paragraph raising the prospect of criminality cited no precedent. Mr. Scharf, a 2011 graduate of Harvard Law School, did not address how any attempt to investigate aggressive congressional oversight as a crime could square with the “Speech or Debate” clause of the Constitution, which shields lawmakers from being subpoenaed or prosecuted by the executive branch over their legislative acts. 

“Beyond being inconsistent with the clear, well-recognized constitutional limitations on your investigative functions, threats to executive branch officials designed to deter them from public service, or process designed merely to abuse or instill fear in the recipient may cross the line into blatant criminality,” Mr. Scharf wrote. “And issuing unlawful subpoenas with the intention of depriving citizens of their constitutional rights and privileges may warrant further investigation.” 

Mr. Scharf’s reference to depriving people of constitutional rights and privileges appeared to be a reference to a statute that makes that a crime. It is generally invoked in the context of people who abuse coercive law enforcement power, like police officers and prison guards. 

According to a report at Forbes, legal experts have had a field day bashing Scharf's letter: 

Numerous legal experts also criticized Scharf’s letter Wednesday, with Deborah Pearlstein, director of Princeton University’s Program in Law and Public Policy, describing it on Bluesky as “a particularly ham-fisted stab at intimidation” that’s “worth the paper it’s written on, not more.”

Other scholars suggested the White House could be backing itself into a corner from which it might be difficult to escape:

Some legal experts noted Wednesday that Scharf’s letter could actually be beneficial for Democrats, giving them a reason to immediately seek subpoenas against the Trump administration because they can argue the White House has already signaled it wouldn’t comply with investigations voluntarily. Should the Trump administration actually bring any prosecutions against Democrats, Scharf’s letter could also give Democrats evidence to claim the charges are politically motivated, and NYU law professor Ryan Goodman argued on X the letter is a “self-own” that will “very likely damage the Trump administration in any litigation that Congress pursues in courts.” Goodman also raised the possibility the letter could violate a federal statute that prohibits obstructing congressional investigations, including via “any threatening letter or communication.”

After spending most of our adult lives in the Deep South -- and facing abuse at the hands of corrupt political forces in Alabama -- Mrs. Schnauzer and I are overjoyed at Scott Colom's U.S. Senate win in Mississippi

(WLBT 3, Facebook)

Having spent the vast majority of my adult life (35-plus years) in Alabama, the Deep South long has held a special interest for me. I married a Southern woman, worked for 25 years in various editorial positions at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and built friendships with a wide variety of people, many of whom I remember fondly to this day. But a series of dark events led to conservative political forces causing me to be cheated out of a job I treasured at UAB, while Carol lost multiple jobs under mysterious circumstances that we've never quite been able to piece together. The ugliness led to a baseless lawsuit from Homewood lawyer and Republican political operative Rob Riley (the son of former governor Bob Riley). The lawsuit, alleging defamation over a series of Legal Schnauzer posts I wrote about the younger Riley's relationship with a lobbyist named Liberty Duke. My reporting never was proven false or defamatory in court -- in fact, Riley and Duke never even asked for a trial, a jury, discovery, or any other proceeding that might have proven their case -- or proven they had no case. Still Riley asked in court documents for my arrest because he claimed I had violated a court order; he also asked for Carol to be arrested, even though she had nothing to do with the blog posts in general. A corrupt judge named Claud Neilson (we later learned that the Rileys and Neilson were involved with Masonic lodges that were affiliated with each other and reportedly engaged in a number of dubious practices related to race; by law, Neilson had a disqualifying conflict and should have recused himself.)

On the evening of Oct. 23, 2013, Shelby County deputies -- led by Chris Blevins -- entered our property without stating their business or stating they had a warrant, much less showing one. Blevins walked into our open garage, where I had just parked our car, and did not comply when I told him to get out, violating U.S. Supreme Court precedent that prohibits warrantless entry into a private home to make an arrest. Blevins proceeded to beat me up, douse me with pepper spray, and drag me to a squad car (along the way, one of his colleagues threatened to break my arm while placing me in handcuffs.) I was taken to the Shelby County Shelby Jail, where I spent five months behind bars and became the only journalist in the Western Hemisphere to be arrested in 2013. My alleged offense was contempt of court for failing to remove the offending posts (even though such an order, short of a jury finding the posts were defamatory, violates decades of First Amendment law). There was no release date for the contempt charge, so I might still be in jail if Carol had not managed to elude capture and get my story out to the world -- where it received nationwide coverage (including The New York Times) and even was discussed in an online forum in Russia). I remain grateful for various free-press advocates and organizations that came to my defense.

The fallout from all of this was devastating. While I was in jail, we had no way of dealing with our mortgage situation. For roughly 25 years we had paid the mortgage timely and in full every month. We fell behind only when Carol and I were cheated out of our jobs, which essentially made us unemployable. When we fell behind on the mortgage, Chase Mortgage (a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase Bank) put us on a forbearance program. Shortly before I was released, however, we learned that our house was going into foreclosure, even though I'm not sure we ever were notified that the forbearance was ending or what options we had to resolve the mortgage issue. (It's difficult to keep up with these matters when you are in jail, and your wife is spending every waking moment trying to get you out.) In short, we suspect Chase Mortgage and associated entities engaged in a wrongful foreclosure, under Alabama law, and they apparently sent proceeds left over from the foreclosure, to Liberty Duke -- even though they lawfully belonged to Carol and me.

Bottom line: We were unable to stop what seemed like a speeded up foreclosure on our home -- one that featured some extremely dark motives from various individuals and entities. We wound up having to flee to Missouri, where I grew up. Through various lawsuits, where we were forced to represent ourselves (never a good or enjoyable circumstance) we have not received one penny for damages we incurred. We have had the pleasure of learning that law-enforcement and federal courts in Missouri are just as corrupt as similar entities in Alabama. For example, sheriff deputies conducted a wrongful eviction against us -- even though our rent had been timely paid and was not late by the 30 days required for an eviction under Missouri law -- and they wound up assaulting Carol, causing a comminuted fracture of her left elbow, requiring eight hours of trauma surgery and $80,000 worth of reconstruction and therapy to repair.

All of this is my way of saying that Carol and I are "children of the South," and because of that, we were overjoyed to learn yesterday that Scott Colom, a black Democrat, had defeated Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. A solid overview of the race and what it means for our country's most consistently conservative region comes from Ben Meiselas, Brett Meiselas, and the Meidas Touch News (MTN):

Lawyer, prosecutor, and now Senator-elect Scott Colom has defeated MAGA Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. CNN has also projected the race for Colom, and with this win,  Democrats now hold 55 Senate seats.

Here’s how we got there. Three more vote drops just came in, totaling 2,394 votes, and Colom won 74.4% of them. The ballots still outstanding look just like those, so his statewide lead, now 4,585 votes, is only going to grow. A recount isn’t going to change a margin that keeps getting bigger. We can safely call it: Scott Colom will be the next U.S. Senator from Mississippi.

This was a nail-biter. On election night, the two candidates were separated by a few dozen votes. Then the counting continued, Colom pulled ahead, and his lead kept growing. 

A historic night

Yes, this is a huge upset, but it’s also a MAJOR moment in American history.

Scott Colom will be the first Black senator to represent Mississippi since Reconstruction. Mississippi’s legislature sent Hiram Revels to the Senate in 1870 and Blanche Bruce in 1875. That’s the last time it happened, roughly 145 years ago. And since Revels and Bruce were chosen by the legislature, Colom will be the first Black senator Mississippi voters ever elected themselves.

He did it in a state everyone said was impossible for a Democrat, by bringing together Mississippians of every background. 

Karma.

I call this poetic justice.

President Biden nominated Scott Colom to be a federal judge in 2022. Colom had bipartisan support. He was a respected district attorney and a beloved figure in Mississippi. Then Cindy Hyde-Smith, as Mississippi’s senator, used her power to block his nomination.

So Scott Colom ran against her. And now he’s taking her seat.

“Pick another senator instead”

I think Colom ran one of the best ads of the whole cycle. When beef prices were soaring, Hyde-Smith shrugged it off and told people, basically, there are so many proteins to choose from, pick another protein. 

Colom’s campaign put her words in front of Mississippians, and they answered: I’d rather pick another senator instead.

He started calling her “Cindy High Prices,” and it stuck, because it was true. 

He went to the Trump rally line to listen

When Trump came to Mississippi before the election, which was itself a sign the race was moving toward Colom, Colom went out and walked the line of people waiting to get in. He wasn’t there to argue. He was there to listen.

In his words, he talked with voters, asked questions and heard what mattered to them, and promised that as senator he’d represent all 82 counties and every Mississippian, no matter who they voted for. 

What did people in that line tell him? Gas prices. Grocery prices. They wanted out of the war in Iran. They weren’t fans of the tariffs. They worried about data centers driving up their electric bills, about Flock surveillance cameras and privacy, and about whose interests Washington was really looking out for. One veteran told him the Second Amendment mattered most. Another voter said what they wanted was honesty. 

“Thank you for giving me the opportunity very early on” I first interviewed Scott Colom on September 23, 2025. I titled the video “Trump gets a rude awakening from voters in Mississippi.” A lot of you told me I was being hyperbolic, that a Democrat could never win in Mississippi. Well, here we are.

He knew all along In that first interview in September 2025, Colom was already sure Mississippi was in play. He reminded me the last Democrat to run for governor lost to the Republican incumbent by only about 27,000 votes. Mississippi is competitive, he said, whenever Democrats have the resources to get their message out. He laid out his first two priorities. First, raise the minimum wage. Mississippi has no state minimum wage, so it’s the federal $7.25 that nobody can live on, and raising the floor lifts everyone’s wages. Second, repeal the health care cuts and save Mississippi’s hospitals. He also said Republicans were already spending money against him because they knew the state was competitive. He was right about that too.

Fifty-five, and soon fifty-six With Colom’s win, Democrats now hold 55 Senate seats. We expect Alaska to be called for Mary Peltola soon. That would be 56 seats, which is about the most anyone thought was possible this cycle. Congratulations, Senator-elect Scott Colom. Well done

Hegseth slips off the impeachment hook for now as 11 House Democrats fail to show for a vote, but the GOP delay might work in Dems' favor as accountability awaits on Jan. 3

(DNA India, Facebook)

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's "secretary of war," likely will be impeached when Democrats take control of Congress on Jan. 3, 2027. But it might have happened yesterday if 11 House Democrats had not failed to appear for a vote. According to a report at Yahoo! News, Republicans, who still control the House of Representatives for 54 days, killed the  articles of impeachment against Hegseth -- for now -- by blocking their consideration on the floor and sending them back to the Judiciary Committee, where GOP leaders can hold them until the next Congress is seated after the first of the year. 

Some observers have opined that the Republican delay actually might work in Democrats' favor. But we still are left with this question: Why in the heck did a substantial number of Democrats fail to show up for an important procedural vote that could have started the impeachment clock on Hegseth -- who easily could stand as the poster boy for Trump-era corruption, an important issue according to polls of voters who cast ballots in the Nov. 3 midterms.

Sarah Jones and Jason Easley report on the latest in the Hegseth saga by writing for The Daily at Politicus USA under the headline "Pete Hegseth survives impeachment for now because 11 House Democrats didn't vote." One senses that Jones and Easley, who write from a distinct liberal perspective, are slightly peeved (you might say "pissed") that Democrats wasted an opportunity yesterday to go after one of Trump's most prominent and dreadful cabinet members. Come to think of it, I also am left-of-center -- going farther left with each passing hour that Trump and the GOP remain in power -- and I, too, am pissed/peeved -- especially given that voters handed Democrats a resounding midterm victory and had every right to expect that their representatives would show up in fire-breathing fashion to start the process of slam dunking a Trumper into the nearest dumpster. But 11 of them did not even bother to show? If you can't act with a sense of urgency now, when our democracy teeters on the edge of fascism, when are you going to start acting like this stuff matters -- when it's too late?

Jones and Easley provide some helpful mathematics to explain how Hegseth slipped off the hook, for the time being, and they also name names of the Democrats who were missing in action. It's good stuff, so let's take a look:

Rep. Thomas Massie’s stated goal was to get Pete Hegseth out of the Department of Defense as soon as possible.

If not for a group of House Democrats who didn't show up to vote in the lame-duck session, Hegseth would be impeached right now.

The final vote on a resolution to send Thomas Massie’s articles of impeachment to committee was 211-204.

A quick bit of math tells you that out of 435 House members, only 415 voted on the measure. Only Massie broke with his party and voted against referring the articles to committee, which was a vote to kill the impeachment.

There were 20 members who didn’t vote, and 11 of them were Democrats.

If eight of those Democrats show up to vote, Hegseth is impeached.

----------------------------------------------------

In a no-holds-barred move that I applaud, Jones and Easley proceed to out the missing Dems. My hope is that some (or all) of the missing will wind up holding serious regrets about their inactions now that names have started appearing in the press. I further hope word will spread from here; I can imagine Rachel Maddow reading names of the miscreants on MS NOW or Keith Olbermann reading them on his daily podcast. I can imagine the inimitable Olbermann, in his basso profundo radio voice, shouting "and today's Worst Person in the World is  . .  "

I should note that, while I'm mostly daydreaming here, my intent is not to embarrass Democrats. I'm on their side, but I think they must drive home the point that they are dealing with serious matters and they will take them seriously. More importantly, I think it's important that Democrats send this message to the public: "You have entrusted us with your votes, and we know it's important that we act  with the intensity of purpose that you expect. We apologize for stubbing our toes on the Hegseth vote. But we will make sure that does not happen in the future. We intend to make sure that everyone in our caucus who is physically able shows up and cast votes in favor of the issues that you have shown matter most to you and our country. Together, we can begin to heal the damage that Donald Trump has inflicted on our democracy.

Let's return to Jones and Easley:

-------------------------------

Here is the list of 11 House Democrats who allowed Hegseth to avoid impeachment today:

Brownley, Correa, Hollen, Hosford, Jackson (IL), Pelosi, Pettersen, Stansbury, Stevens, Strickland, Wilson (FL).

Haley Stevens has abandoned Congress. Her office is locked, and no one is there. Some of these members, like Pelosi, are retiring. There is no excuse for not showing up to vote to impeach Pete Hegseth.

Pete Hegseth will wish he had been impeached today.

--------------------------------------

I like the sound of that last sentence. Jones and Easley make clear that Democrats might be engaging in some crafty strategy -- and it could  pay off. They write:

There may have been some strategic thinking at work on the part of the Democrats who didn’t vote. Some Democrats were worried that Speaker Mike Johnson might send the Hegseth impeachment to the Senate during the lame duck sesson while Republicans still have the majority, and Leader John Thune would quickly dispose of it.

By waiting until Democrats have taken control of Congress to impeach Hegseth, the House will guarantee that the Secretary of Defense will stand trial in the Senate.

As Rep. Massie put it during his Monday press conference:

 I’m being polite here. What is an impeachment? An impeachment is just firing somebody, really. You don’t go to prison. You don’t go to jail. You’re not-- You don’t pay a fine. Okay. When the Democrats get in charge, they are going to be very vicious. The one thing that I wasn’t able to compel with my articles of impeachment and which is why we don’t want to refer it to a committee, ‘cause they won’t have hearings, but the Democrats are gonna have hearings. They won’t have just eight articles of impeachment.

Democrats will fully investigate Hegseth, and my guess is a lot of skeletons are going to come out of the closet.

For exactly one week, Donald Trump seemed to be turning into a "gracious loser," but yesterday he returned to his "sore loser" ways, claiming midterms were rigged, riddled with unreliable machines

CGTNEurope, Facebook)

Donald Trump, never known to be a gracious loser, seemed to be morphing into a different person in the week since last Tuesday's midterm elections, which resulted in a wipeout loss for Trump and his Republican Party. As it turns out, Trump might have needed a little more time for his sore-loser persona to resurface.

Trump seems to be having an increasingly hard time stringing together a coherent sentence or two, so it is hard to determine exactly the nature of his complaint. But in a jointly published article, Mediaite and Yahoo News! do their best to sort it out. Under the headline "'Just stop!' Trump bashed by everyone from Megyn Kelly to Jake Tapper for crying voter fraud after a week of (mostly) accepting the results," Joe DePaolo writes: 

It took a week, but President Donald Trump is now suggesting the 2026 election was rigged against Republicans — despite many of the votes being held in states run by the GOP.

"Does anybody really believe that this 'Election' was honest," Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday. "How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting 'dumps' were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote. It's all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!"

One problem with Trump's argument is that the polls weren't wrong. In fact, they were stunningly accurate, as DePaolo makes clear:

Election data specialists such as Nate Silver argued the polls showed the exact opposite of what Trump claims they did — Silver's final pre-election forecast gave Democrats an 80 percent chance to win control of the Senate, and a 96 percent chance to take the House.

In other words, the polls were right on target. If it wasn't the polls, what was Trump whining about? Was Trump claiming Democrats did something nefarious? That's what his use of the word "rigged" implies, but he never seems to actually point a finger at the Dems. Is he saying voting machines were faulty? If so, whose fault is that?

Finally, Trump claims  "early voting 'dumps' were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote." I've read that sentence at least a half dozen times, and I still don't know what it means. I put in a query to AI Overview, and even it seemed to be stumped. I asked, "What are voting dumps, and why would it be a problem if they were large?" I got only a vague reply that did not really answer either part of my question. Let's return to the Mediaite/Yahoo report:

Numerous times over the past week, Trump has said he accepts the election results. But he has also shared posts from others on Truth Social questioning the outcome.

But now, he appears to be going all in on election denialism — even if the nature of the conspiracy he's suggesting is unclear. Critics called out the bizarre notion that the GOP would allow elections to be rigged against them in states they totally control — such as Texas.

"Ah yes the diabolical conspiracy in Texas to deliver the state to Democrats, led by the heads of the state … GOP Governor [Greg] Abbott and … Attorney General [Ken] Paxton who … lost," wrote CNN's Jake Tapper on X.

Megyn Kelley did not seem to be buying Trump's argument either, and she was even more succinct than Tapper, producing a two-word response to the president -- "Just stop."

Trump threatens Congressional Democrats with "imprisonment" for planning to investigate corruption -- in other words, for doing their jobs

(The Jamia Times, Facebook)

Voters who thought the midterm wipeout might inject a dose of sanity into Donald Trump's cranium can toss that notion into the dumpster. In fact, Trump showed signs over the weekend that he might be developing a form of mental illness that merits attention. We are not suggesting Trump is insane; after all, insanity has become a legal term, more than a diagnosable medical condition. With that in mind, we will just say that Trump, in the past few days, has made statements and suggested actions that are more than a little "nutty." We should note that Trump's words involve legal concepts, and it has been clear for months that Trump has virtually zero understanding of ideas such as "the rule of law" or "constitutional rights." You might think it would be helpful for a man serving as U.S. president to possess at least an elemental grasp of these concepts. But Trump has shown over and over that his cluelessness on such matters is profound. 

The most recent example came when newly elected Democratic lawmakers said the robust corruption that has marked Trump's second term should be investigated. That prompted Trump, in one of his over-the-top snits, to state that said Democrats should face "imprisonment." We can think of at least two reasons this is  unsettling stuff: (1) Trump did not, and could not, point to any fact or law that would suggest investigating his administration amounted to a crime; (2) The Department of Justice Manual clearly states that the DOJ "will not advise the White House concerning pending or contemplated criminal or civil law enforcement investigations or cases unless doing so is important for the performance of the President’s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.

In short, Trump's DOJ cannot prosecute anyone just because the president wants them to do it. We spelled this out in a post dated 2/17/25, under the headline "Clueless about the law and hungry for revenge, Donald Trump drives the DOJ toward a cliff we haven't seen since the days of Richard Nixon and Watergate." 

How did Trump come to give Americans a new reason to wonder about his mental health? The International Business Times (IBT) provides an excellent overview under the headline "Donald Trump reportedly wants to imprison Democrats for doing their jobs as experts say 'this will end poorly'; a presidential demand for imprisonment puts congressional oversight and political accountability at the centre of a new constitutional confrontation." 

As the IBTimes headline suggests, the Democrats in question are simply doing their jobs. There is nothing criminal about members of Congress conducting a Congressional investigation. If Trump did not want to be subject to such scrutiny, he shouldn't have created a corrupt administration. Better yet, he could have done us all a favor and never run for president. Fernando writes:

In a Truth Social post, Trump said Democrats had threatened Attorney General Todd Blanche and other administration officials with impeachment. He maintained that those officials had committed no impeachable offences. He further claimed Dems were committing "extortion" by announcing plans to investigate Republicans, and in some cases, their supporters.

How does Trump know those officials "had committed no impeachable offences? He couldn't. How does Trump know the elements of extortion? He doesn't. Here is more about Trump's statement from the IBT report, as Rhealene Fernando writes:

Trump singled out Michigan's Elissa Slotkin. At a University of Chicago event in October, Slotkin discussed congressional investigations into possible misconduct by administration officials. She said the prospect of scrutiny might discourage graduates from accepting administration jobs. Some Republicans criticized her, but her remarks likely fall well within First Amendment protections. As often is the case when Trump makes a public statement, it is mostly bluster.

In this instance, here is the key question: Are members of Congress subject to punishment for official legislative acts, such as conducting investigations, holding hearings, and preparing committee reports?  For the most part, the answer is no. Consider these words from Congress.gov:

Members of Congress enjoy a constitutionally explicit form of legal immunity. The Speech or Debate Clause ensures that, "for any Speech or Debate in either House," Members of Congress "shall not be questioned in any other Place." The Court has interpreted the Clause to promote legislative independence and restrict executive or judicial intrusions into the legislative sphere. Under this broad reading, the Clause provides Members (and staff) with various forms of immunity that extend well beyond "speeches" or "debates" undertaken in the halls of Congress, and instead protects Members from liability for any "legislative act"—which the Court has defined as conduct that is an "integral part of the deliberative and communicative processes" through which Congress implements "matters which the Constitution places within the jurisdiction of either House." The immunity that the Clause provides is absolute, applies in civil, criminal, and administrative proceedings, and, at least in some circuits, protects Members from compelled disclosures in various forms of investigations. . . . 

The bottom line? There are a number of qualifiers in all of this at Congress.gov., but the DOJ almost certainly cannot prosecute members of Congress for conducting investigations -- and Trump cannot order members to be investigated for doing their jobs.