A $1.4 billion cryptocurrency windfall. Well-timed stock trades. A wedding after-party bankrolled by a Kremlin-connected businessman.
For nearly two years, congressional Democrats were powerless to probe these potential scandals and conflicts looming over President Trump and his family businesses. But after pulling off a landslide midterm election victory that amounted to a sweeping rebuke of the president, they will soon seize control of Congress — and with it, the power to open investigations, hold hearings and issue subpoenas.
Representative Robert Garcia, the California Democrat poised to chair the House Oversight Committee, summed up the threat succinctly in a statement late Tuesday: “Lawyer up.”
In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Garcia said that his warning was meant chiefly for people at the White House who “engaged in corruption” and enriched themselves. “The Trump crime family is the top of our investigative priorities,” he said.
Subpoenas, though, do not guarantee a fruitful investigation.
Some of the president’s business associates and allies are expected to fight some of the subpoenas in court, which could become a lengthy process. And even if the Democrats shed new light on moneymaking ventures, there is no indication that the Trump family violated the law — potentially complicating any effort to pursue impeachment proceedings against the president.
Still, Mr. Garcia and other congressional leaders believe they will find a target-rich environment.
After winning back the White House two years ago, Mr. Trump abandoned his first-term pledge to rein in his family’s deal making, enabling new ventures that enriched the president, his sons and some of his advisers. He shrugged off concerns about conflicts of interest, contending that he “found out that nobody cared.”
He turned out to be wrong. An AP exit poll found that government corruption was a crucial issue for many voters, and that roughly seven in 10 voters said Congress was doing “not enough” to provide checks and balances on the presidency.
In the House, the Oversight and Judiciary committees will lead the investigative efforts, which will not be limited to the Trump family business. Senator Maggie Hassan, the New Hampshire Democrat in line to chair the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is expected to conduct her own investigations as well.
“We need to zero in quickly on the forms of systemic pay-to-play corruption that are destroying the rule of law and have cost the public huge amounts of money,” Representative Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat expected to lead the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.
Here are some of the main issues that Democrats are expected to investigate.
Crypto
Mr. Trump’s financial returns have multiplied during his second term, largely thanks to his crypto businesses. Those ventures pulled in at least $1.4 billion in revenue last year, a windfall that posed unparalleled potential conflicts of interest.
Congressional investigators will most likely focus on the Trump family’s main crypto company, World Liberty Financial. Last year, an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates bought a huge stake in World Liberty. Four months later, the Emiratis struck a deal with the Trump administration — over the objections of some national security officials — for the export of valuable computer chips.
Mr. Trump also collected hundreds of millions of dollars from sales of his $TRUMP memecoin, a type of cryptocurrency that is typically treated like a collectible, and World Liberty’s sale of its own digital tokens. The buyers included foreign entities and businesses seeking relief from the Trump administration.
Donald Trump Jr.
The activities of the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., are another top priority for Democrats.
Mr. Trump Jr. has not made things easy for himself. He allowed a Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to help finance his wedding after-party in the Bahamas this year, drawing outrage from congressional Democrats. The president has said that his son repaid the businessman, Umar Kremlev, but Mr. Garcia has flagged it as an investigative target.
Mr. Raskin has also begun investigating 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a senior partner. Several of the companies that 1789 has invested in have received government funding while others benefited from Trump policies.
In a statement, a spokesman for Donald Trump Jr. said that he “is a private citizen who holds no position in government and has broken no laws.”
The statement added that Mr. Trump Jr. “has never sought to influence government policy or official decision making for the benefit of his personal business interests and has every right to pursue lawful and legitimate business and investment opportunities.”
Jared Kushner
Jared Kushner, a son-in-law of the president, is also on the Democrats’ radar.
Mr. Kushner is not a formal member of Mr. Trump’s government, but he has operated as a top envoy in negotiations to resolve President Trump’s war with Iran and Russia’s war in Ukraine. Mr. Raskin has called for Mr. Kushner to recuse himself from those negotiations, partly citing potential conflicts arising from Mr. Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, which has received investments from foreign nations that have a stake in those conflicts.
“Partisan politics aside, no one has ever pointed to a specific legal or ethical guideline that Jared or Affinity has violated,” Chad Mizelle, an attorney for Mr. Kushner, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Trump Organization
Unlike his first term, when the Trump family real estate business swore off all new foreign deals, the president imposed few restrictions on deal-making in his second term. That omission opened the door for the Trump Organization to announce new international property deals in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among others, licensing the family name in exchange for payments.
There is no indication that the Trump Organization linked these deals to foreign policy. And although real estate projects are potentially lucrative for the company, they represent a small fraction of what the president earned last year, meaning they will likely draw less scrutiny.
Stock Trading
In the first three months of this year, President Trump’s brokerage accounts placed more than 3,600 trades, and some of those trades appeared to be well timed.
In February, nine days after Mr. Trump’s account executed a purchase of more than $1 million in Dell stock, the president praised the company and its founder, Michael Dell, at an event in Georgia. The Pentagon later announced a $9.7 billion contract with Dell.
There is no indication that the contract was related to the president’s stake in the company, and the trade represented a small fraction of his overall investment portfolio. The Trump Organization has said that the president and his family have no ability to direct the trading, all of which is controlled by outside brokerage firms.
Democrats nonetheless seized on the timing. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat in line to lead the banking committee, has previously pushed for an investigation into Mr. Trump’s trades.
I.R.S. Immunity
Democrats might also examine the protection Mr. Trump’s own administration provided him from Internal Revenue Service scrutiny.
In a stunning order this spring, then-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told the I.R.S. to halt any ongoing investigations into Mr. Trump, two of his sons and their businesses. Mr. Blanche’s order also barred the I.R.S. from starting any new audits of the tax returns that the Trumps had, at that point, already filed.
Historically, the I.R.S. has audited the sitting president’s tax returns every year, as a way to signal that even the occupant of the Oval Office has to comply with the nation’s tax laws.
A congressional investigation would most likely focus on the circumstances and legality of the Justice Department granting Mr. Trump this protection, which came after Mr. Trump sued the I.R.S. over the leak of his tax returns.
Other Targets
The Trump family is hardly the only area of interest.
Democrats made it clear during the campaign that they planned to use their newfound congressional oversight powers to look at corruption allegations across the Trump administration.
Mr. Garcia has said he plans to investigate “corporate corruption,” including looking at whether donors to projects such as the White House ballroom may have leveraged their contributions to benefit from Trump administration decisions or government contracts.
He also plans to continue the House’s investigation into the government’s handling of its criminal case against Mr. Epstein, who died in prison in 2019, and his potential links to Mr. Trump. Mr. Garcia has pushed to subpoena Mr. Blanche, who oversaw the release of the Epstein files, a move that Republicans have resisted.
Mr. Raskin also has vowed to investigate the lucrative pardon industry that has sprung up around the Trump administration.
Ms. Hassan said she planned to investigate the Trump administration’s use of no-bid contracts to donors and other allies of the president. Several deals, including a lucrative contract for deportation planes that was approved under Kristi Noem’s tenure as homeland security secretary, have come under intense scrutiny.
In both the House and Senate, Democrats will also seek to use their subpoena power to investigate the killings of Americans by federal immigration officers, including two shootings in Minneapolis at the beginning of the year.
As they sought to make the war in Iran a focus of their campaigns, Democrats also signaled plans to investigate Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is already facing an impeachment effort.
So far, Democratic leaders have demurred when discussing an impeachment effort against the president, with many lawmakers wary after their two efforts to remove him from office in his first term came up short.
Madeleine Ngo contributed reporting
The post On the Democrats’ Agenda: Investigations of Trump and His Family appeared first on New York Times.
