CLEAR YOUR SCHEDULES

Trump Team’s Secret Panic Over Looming Probes Revealed

The Democratic rout on Election Day could spell trouble for the president and his cronies.

President Donald Trump’s White House is publicly brushing off the investigations headed its way while quietly bulking up its legal staff, insiders have revealed.

Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in a midterm rout, and four current and former administration officials told NBC News the White House had been preparing for the investigations Democrats have vowed to launch even before the GOP started racking up losses on November 3.

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The White House counsel’s office has bulked up its staff and is setting up protocols for inquiries from Democratic-led congressional committees, one White House official said before the results came in.

Aides past and present have also started hiring lawyers, three former Trump administration officials said. Some former Trump officials are declining chances to return to the White House for fear of getting swept up in Democrats’ oversight efforts, according to an administration official and a person familiar with the matter.

Some junior staffers are less worried than senior aides, with one former official saying they think Congress may have “bigger fish to fry.”

“Lawyer up,” California Rep. Robert Garcia, the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said after Democrats clinched the House.

Sen. Ron Wyden, who is expected to lead the Senate Finance Committee, followed an hour later with “Subpoenas.”

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Rep. Delia Ramirez told several Trump administration officials to “Clear your schedule.”

Publicly, the White House is projecting defiance. “If Democrats choose to pursue sham investigations and radical left policies, they are choosing to work against the American people,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said.

Another White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “They should be reminded that we still control the federal government and all of its powers.”

The Trump administration has denied any wrongdoing.

Garcia laid out four targets for his committee starting in January at a Wednesday news conference in Huntington Beach, California. “The reality is there’s so much corruption that we have to also really focus on a few key things,” he said.

They are the Trump family’s moneymaking ventures; the dealings of former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, a department special government employee; corporate corruption; and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged co-conspirators.

Wyden plans to scrutinize the Trump administration’s drug-pricing agreements with pharmaceutical companies. Elon Musk, Trump’s sons and a swath of other Republican donors and contractors are likely to be swept up too, according to Reuters interviews with around a dozen lawyers, members of Congress, congressional aides and political consultants.

“We expect a huge volume of aggressive and expansive investigations that will target both the administration and the private sector,” said lawyer Rachel Cotton, a congressional oversight specialist at Arnold & Porter.

Impeachment remains an open question. Democrats impeached Trump twice in his first term, and the Republican-led Senate acquitted him both times.

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Reuters previously reported Democrats have opted for investigations over an immediate impeachment effort, and NBC reported the party has not reached a consensus on whether to try again.

A conviction would take 67 senators, and Democrats are expected to hold at most 56 seats once the final votes are tallied.

Trump spent part of Wednesday showing off the construction of his White House ballroom, and one journalist asked whether he was concerned about being impeached again.

“Not even a little bit,” Trump said. “I think it would destroy the Democrat Party if they did that, because impeachment for no reason—what, for having a successful country?”

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