Democrats haven’t even taken their new gavels yet, and they’re already sending threats. Now the Justice Department is pushing back.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), set to chair the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations when the 120th Congress convenes in January, sent nearly 60 letters last week to known donors to President Trump’s White House ballroom, including Amazon, Apple, BlackRock, Google, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Palantir. He warned them to hand over records of their gifts by Jan. 4 or face subpoenas, the New York Post reported.
Houston U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz has ordered Blumenthal to preserve documents related to his effort to intimidate donors to President Trump’s White House ballroom, citing 18 U.S.C. §§ 241 and 242. These Reconstruction-era statutes were written to punish conspiracies and official acts that injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate people in the exercise of their rights, the same tools once used against the Ku Klux Klan.
The Democratic senator, who has long cast his party as the guardian against oppression, now finds those same anti-oppression statutes aimed at his own push to force disclosure of private donors.
Reitz said Blumenthal had “threatened citizens for associating themselves with the president and other public officials.” “It is … extraordinary for an elected official to intimidate citizens for engaging in philanthropic practices that will benefit our nation for generations,” he wrote. “The American people are entitled to freely associate themselves without elected officials terrorizing them with aggressive, harassing government action.”
Blumenthal wrote that many donors tried to keep their contributions secret despite having “deep financial, business, or other personal interests before the Trump administration,” and that the fundraising “suggests possible conflicts of interest and even corruption.”
Reitz posted the letter, dated Nov. 11, on X, calling it “the first step to stop this abuse of power.” It does not announce criminal charges but requires Blumenthal to confirm preservation by 6 p.m. ET on November 18 or face “significant legal consequences.”
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter immediately backed the move on X: “The First Amendment expressly prohibits Congress from infringing the speech and association rights of Americans. DOJ will defend against threats to those rights, period.”
At the center of the fight is the project those donors are funding. The ballroom, a 90,000-square-foot space replacing the demolished East Wing, will cost at least $400 million and is due by August 2028. In August, a divided Supreme Court let construction continue.
Blumenthal isn’t the only Democrat drawing fire. White House Counsel Will Scharf sent a similar warning to incoming House Oversight Committee Chairman Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), saying Trump officials “will not be extorted and will not be cowed” by threats of sweeping Democratic investigations.
“Threats to executive branch officials designed to deter them from public service, or process designed merely to abuse or instill fear in the recipient may cross the line into blatant criminality,” Scharf wrote. “And issuing unlawful subpoenas with the intention of depriving citizens of their constitutional rights and privileges may warrant further investigation.”
Reitz didn’t stop there. On Nov. 12, he sent a similar demand to Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) over comments she made on CNN’s “The Lead” with Jake Tapper, where she said congressional investigations should go after “the people around Donald Trump who are doing his bidding and enabling this.” She added: “I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration?’ . . . I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want.’ . . . I want that deterrence message sent.”
“Your comments reflect soon-to-be-realized fantasies about weaponizing congressional investigations for the purpose of personal aggrandizement and punishment of people close to the President,” Reitz wrote. Slotkin has until 6 p.m. ET on Nov. 19 to confirm in writing that she has preserved the materials. Reitz posted the letter on X with a direct assessment: “Sounds potentially illegal to me.”
The hypocrisy is staggering. For years, Democrats lectured the country that no one is above the law. Now two senators who haven’t even picked up their gavels are using the power of their office to threaten private citizens for giving to a White House project or daring to work for the president. That isn’t oversight. It’s intimidation, and they are about to learn the law applies to them too.
