Amna Nawaz:
As Democrats prepare to take control of Congress, the White House is threatening them over planned investigations into the Trump administration.
In a letter this week, the White House’s top lawyer warned the likely new House Oversight Chairman, Robert Garcia, that aggressive surveillance of the administration — quote — “could cross the line into blatant criminality.”
It comes amid a wave of high-profile resignations within the Justice Department following last week’s Democratic victories and reports that more are to come.
Here to discuss it, Devlin Barrett. He’s a New York Times reporter who covers federal law enforcement.
Glad to see you again. Good to see you.
Devlin Barrett:
Thanks for inviting me.
Amna Nawaz:
Let’s start with this letter. Is there any reason for the White House to threaten members of Congress for their surveillance?
Devlin Barrett:
Look, as a legal document, it doesn’t mean much. As a policy document, it is very important, because it sends the message about the extent to which the White House plans to fight these investigations.
We have already seen the administration conduct legal investigations into its actions. So, I take this letter to essentially mean that we intend to fight every subpoena that you send us.
Amna Nawaz:
Along the same lines, we saw Attorney General Todd Blanche say this weekend that Democrats’ comments about possibly investigating certain members of the administration amounted to pure threats and that some of them could be considered a crime.
Do you see the attorney general launching investigations into Democratic lawmakers conducting surveillance?
Devlin Barrett:
Well, we’ve already seen them launch investigations against Democratic lawmakers on very flimsy premises. For example, there was an attempt to indict lawmakers who made a video talking to military officers about failing to comply with illegal orders.
I don’t think there’s any reason to think they’ll stop launching investigations into Democratic lawmakers. But I think when it comes to this particular fight around investigations, they’re going to have a really hard time coming up with some sort of criminal theory as to why a congressional investigation is somehow a crime.
They certainly didn’t explain it. This is really not the case with the letter, nor is Blanche in her comments.
Amna Nawaz:
Devlin, let’s talk about some of these resignations, several high-profile people who left their jobs last week, and some were very powerful advocates of the president’s agenda, among them Harmeet Dhillon, who was the president’s former personal attorney and headed the Justice Department’s civil rights division, Jason Quinones, who oversaw investigations into the president’s opponents.
Brett Shumate played a central role in the attack on DEI programs, and John Eisenberg oversaw national security at the Justice Department. What do we know about why they are leaving and why now?
Devlin Barrett:
First, it’s not entirely unusual for senior Justice Department officials to leave the country after an election, after two years.
But this is obviously a very different type of Justice Department in the Trump administration. And I think what you see here in a lot of these cases are senior officials who, for very different reasons, each unique to their own jobs, have failed to meet some of the expectations that the White House had set for them or even that Todd Blanche had set for them, particularly when you look at the U.S. Attorney in Miami, who is in charge of this major conspiracy investigation against former officials.
The White House was very disappointed that this did not result in more charges or criminal charges.
Amna Nawaz:
Do you think they were forced to deviate from these rules or asked to leave?
Devlin Barrett:
Our reporting shows that there is significant dissatisfaction among senior officials with the recently departed U.S. Attorney in Miami. And there were significant disagreements on some of these other issues like national security and civil rights.
Amna Nawaz:
Permanent replacements for these roles would require Senate confirmation. With the arrival of the Democratic majority, how do you see this playing out?
Devlin Barrett:
Well, that’s why these departures are categorically different than many other administrations, because it’s going to be extremely difficult to confirm someone in these high-level positions that the president would like to have in these high-level positions.
So it may be that the people who remain in the Trump Justice Department are sort of locked away for a long time – for the rest of the trip.
Amna Nawaz:
There are also reports that the DOJ warned its field office leaders in a meeting earlier this week to prepare to be — quote — “on war footing” when Democrats take power or to leave if they cannot do so.
When you hear that, combined with these resignations, what do you think we should expect from the Department of Justice?
Devlin Barrett:
So one thing is that this happened in the type of call where the person — the senior official who is making these calls is doing a lot of this kind of rhetoric. To many career staffers, this comes across as wild rhetoric.
But this kind of rhetoric is not that unusual from this senior official. But what’s really interesting here is that the election had consequences for the Justice Department. And one of those consequences is that states like Texas are now going to be run by Democratic officials.
So far, states like Texas have been very cooperative with the Trump administration on issues related to ICE and immigration. You’ve already seen local officials in Texas say they’re going to scale back that cooperation.
So I think what you’re seeing in terms of statements like that is that, from Stephen Miller on down, this administration is preparing for more arguments and more fights with local officials, similar to what they’ve had with officials in, for example, Minnesota. And, politically speaking, in a way, Texas became Minnesota.
Amna Nawaz:
Democrats are also preparing their agenda for when they gain a majority in both houses of Congress.
The idea of impeaching Attorney General Todd Blanche has also been floated by a few lawmakers, including Jamie Raskin, who is set to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. How likely is this kind of decision, according to your reports, and what is its resonance within the Justice Department?
Devlin Barrett:
Todd Blanche has overseen a series of drastic changes at the Justice Department, causing mass departures, mass layoffs, and there is a huge morale problem among the department’s rank and file.
I don’t think anyone really has a good idea of what Congress is going to do. I think where we are now – that letter that we talked about earlier shows that everyone is kind of drawing lines and talking tough.
But, at some point, Congress will have to come up and vote, and then we’ll see how willing they are to go after which officials they really want to go after. Clearly, Pete Hegseth is another major Pentagon target. Democrats are going to have to make decisions and decide on priorities about who they really want to target.
Amna Nawaz:
We will follow your report, that’s for sure.
Devlin Barrett of the New York Times, always good to see you. THANKS.
Devlin Barrett:
Thanks for inviting me.
Gn usa
