CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins has sounded the alarm on a new post-midterms threat from the White House.
On Wednesday, White House counsel Will Scharf sent a letter to incoming House Oversight Committee chair Robert Garcia to warn about potential Democratic investigations, saying they may amount to “blatant criminality.”
The investigations flagged in the letter, obtained by Punchbowl News, involve congressional Democrats the White House claims will issue subpoenas to “harass, threaten and deter” Trump administration officials from carrying out their duties, as well as potentially targeting the president’s family.
Anderson Cooper and Kaitlan Collins on CNN.
In a statement following the midterms, Garcia warned the Trump administration: “Lawyer up.”
Speaking on Anderson Cooper 360° on Wednesday, Collins said the response from Trump’s team was “a signal” of how the administration will operate with Democrats from January.
Collins noted that it remained unclear if Democrats would pursue criminal cases against Republicans, or indeed “what exactly the crime would be.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche with President Donald Trump.
Collins referenced Trump’s furious Saturday Truth Socialpost, saying the Democrats were “threatening a lot of people” including Attorney General Todd Blanche, “with Impeachment and many other forms of punishment, even though they admit they have no reason to do so.” He claimed the alleged threats were “extortion at the highest level.”
The CNN anchor said the letter to Garcia, which was dated Monday, Nov. 9, but released on Wednesday, follows Trump being “angry last week,” and noted, “He got angrier by the day after the midterms.”
She warned that the explosive tone of the letter is “a signal of how the administration plans to handle this, come January.”
“They are going to fight these investigations, and they’re basically saying it’s the ones that they believe are going a step too far, but obviously it’s their definition of what is going too far here.”
Collins added, “This is going even further than Trump went in his first term, when they were ignoring subpoenas or defying subpoenas. They’re signaling this is going to be a very combative White House with this Democratic majority here in Washington.”
Later, on her show, The Source, Collins interviewed Garcia, who insisted that the White House’s letter is “not gonna change our posture at all” once Democrats regain control of Congress in January.
Robert Garcia appears on CNN with Kaitlan Collins.
“They are going to fight these subpoenas,” Collins said.
“It’s very clear that the president’s council and the lawyers at the White House don’t understand the Constitution, which lays out very clearly that it’s a job of Congress to serve as oversight, to serve as an equal branch of government,” Garcia said.
Pointing out their job is to ensure checks and balances with the government, Garcia added, “The idea that the president, the attorney general, the White House legal team is trying to intimidate us, is not going to work.”
Asked by Collins about how they plan to respond to the White House, Garcia flagged a possible investigation of not just Trump, but his family and their business interests during their father’s second presidency.
“Whether it’s Don Jr.’s red wedding, whether it’s sitting on boards getting contracts from the Pentagon, whether it’s crypto schemes, they are billions of dollars richer, the Trump family, while the American public is struggling between paying the gas and the groceries.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment
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