Now that the Democratic Party has decisively defeated the Republican Party in the 2026 Midterm elections, everyone in Washington is circling the wagons.
Democrats have said all the right things before their generational victory and immediately after.
President Donald J. Trump gives U.S. travel executives a tour of the White House grounds after a press conference in the Oval Office, Wednesday, September 2, 2026. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)
Donald Trump 2018 Oval Office Photo. White House Handout.
However, some disagree on how the new, overwhelming Democratic majorities should proceed once sworn into power this January.
On the one hand, you have several prominent Democrats insisting that they want to focus on the issues that catapulted the party into power–affordability and ending the war.
On the other hand, the Democrats are arguing over whether they should engage in a massive anti-corruption investigation into the Republican Party, specifically President Donald J. Trump and his top aides.
And as that internal Democratic Party debate occurs, the increasingly fearful elements of the soon-to-be targeted Trump administration are now signaling they will initiate counter-investigations into any Democrats who dare investigate–or prosecute–Trump administration officials or Republican leaders.
Todd Blanche Goes Wild
Attorney General Todd Blanche, the man who served as Trump’s personal attorney during the president’s New York fraud trial (and who was subject to constant vituperations from his presidential client during that trial), has said that Democratic lawmakers could find themselves under investigation by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ).
Of course, the executive branch, as a coequal branch, can investigate Democratic lawmakers. But it’s peculiar.
What’s more, the Democrats have a true mandate from the voters.
After all, Democrats have secured 54 Senate seats, 254 House seats, and the DNC flipped stalwart Republican states, like Texas and Mississippi, in the recent election. Votes are still being counted in some states as of this writing.
Plus, multiple polls conducted before and during the election show that voters ranked corruption among the top ten issues they cared most about.
Democrats have a mandate from voters to pursue impropriety within the Trump administration.
For Blanche to come out and say this, on top of President Donald Trump’s decision to elevate ultra-MAGA hawk Stephen Miller as his next White House Chief of Staff following the GOP’s historic defeat on November 3, indicates that the country is in for an intense, partisan war for the remaining two years of the Trump administration.
Voters do not want to see the Trump administration resisting investigations into alleged corruption. They don’t support Trump going to war with lawmakers and their staffs who are trying to root out perceived corruption.
That fight will hollow out whatever remains of the Trump administration and the GOP going into the 2028 presidential election and, if Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ prediction is correct, going into 2032.
Democrats Discipline Themselves
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the next likely chairwoman of the Senate Banking Committee, has already promised to launch intensive investigations into corporations suspected of exploiting consumers and investors alike.
Warren went on CBS’ Face the Nation, where she warned that any businesses suspected of cheating Americans would face serious investigations once she took over as chair of the Senate Banking Committee.
Her committee will target technology firms, cryptocurrency businesses, prediction markets, and corporations with financial relationships involving the Trump administration (or members of the president’s family).
Republicans argue that these threatened investigations are little more than political witch hunts, and they represent abuses of power by an energized Democratic Party.
Whether that is true or not, voters absolutely want multiple instances of possible criminality within the Trump administration investigated.
And the Republicans did it to themselves, not only because key members of the administration may have actually engaged in corruption, but also because the GOP so badly betrayed the Americans who voted them into power in 2024 that most voters now want to see some retribution exacted upon the Republicans they believe betrayed them.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) is expected to become the chairman of the House Oversight Committee and has emerged as a leading figure in the percolating partisan storm.
After the DNC’s sweeping electoral victory on November 3, Garcia warned Trump administration officials on his Twitter/X profile to “Lawyer up.”
That comment prompted Blanche to suggest his DOJ would investigate incoming Democrat lawmakers. Garcia responded by accusing Blanche of trying to intimidate members of Congress into preventing them from doing their jobs.
Trump Enters the Fight
It isn’t only Trump administration officials firing back at the incoming–galvanized–Democratic majorities in Congress.
The president himself, still licking his wounds after his party’s historic defeat, is directly involving himself in this fight.
On November 7, Trump accused Democrats of threatening administration officials and Republican voters through unfair investigations and impeachment proceedings.
He then compared Democrats’ actions and statements to extortion and apparently ordered AG Blanche to investigate.
Democrats are preparing extensive investigations of the DOJ itself, which might be why Blanche has also attempted to preempt the ire of the incoming Democratic majorities in Congress.
His threats are impotent, though, given how badly the Trump administration has managed the country and how powerful the incoming Democratic majorities are.
Potential subjects of Democratic investigations include Trump DOJ prosecutions of political opponents, presidential pardons, and the mishandling of Jeffrey Epstein-related investigative materials.
And it wouldn’t be a Trump scandal without concerns that the president’s tax returns will become a focal point of Democratic investigations.
This time, the issue is over a controversial settlement that the Trump DOJ made with the president himself.
The new Democratic majority is expected to examine the DOJ’s internal operations–including the departures of career prosecutors and allegations of political interference in federal investigations.
President Trump will clearly resist these Democratic investigations by invoking executive privilege and other legal protections.
As President Richard M. Nixon’s fight with Congress during the Watergate scandal showed, though, these protections go only so far in protecting the executive branch.
Such disputes will produce prolonged litigation over access to government records and testimony from Trump administration officials, and they will stretch the constitutional limits of congressional investigative authority (as well as the executive branch’s ability to resist that authority).
How Far Is Too Far?
And this gets us back to where we began: the debate within the DNC. How far do elected Democrats go in their righteous wrath against President Trump and his perceived corrupt administration?
Will the newly minted overwhelming Democratic majority spend its time prosecuting the Trump administration for all the corruption it may (or may not) have committed?
Or do the Democrats pick their battles better?
One Maine-based Democratic Party strategist, Justin Snyder, told me recently on the Mario Nawfal program that Democrats intended to present the forty-seventh president with an informal offer: you cooperate with the Democratic majorities on key legislation and the Democrats will narrow down the scope of their investigations or, if Trump wants to play the role of the petulant child, the Democrats will gut his administration from stem to stern.
That’s not to say the Democrats will not investigate the Trump administration for alleged corruption.
They will. Given how much voters prioritized the anti-corruption message, and how significant the Democrats’ win was this November, they have an obligation to investigate corruption.
But Democrat lawmakers might want to start at the cabinet level or lower, leaving President Trump and possibly his family as effective hostages in the White House to ensure maximum cooperation from the forty-seventh president on a host of legislative issues.
Democrats Have a Mandate
However, statements from senior Trump administration officials, like Todd Blanche and the president himself, suggest Democrats might have to do things the hard way.
But doing things the “hard way” by fixating on investigating every aspect of the Trump administration might mean that Democrats squander their historic electoral win.
Americans were clear that above all else, they want the Democrats to end the Iran War and address affordability before dealing with anything else–including corruption.
Given how the Trump administration is reacting to the prospect of congressional investigations, though, the country seems headed for a real constitutional crisis soon.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert is the Senior National Security Editor. He also manages The Weichert Brief on Substack. Weichert is the co-host of The Mario Nawfal Show on Twitter/X. He is the author of four bestselling national security books, most recently A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine (Encounter Books). His next book, Fortress Americas: A New Monroe Doctrine (Tucker Carlson Books), is due out December 8. Follow him via Twitter/X @WeTheBrandon.
