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Democrats plan to ramp up investigations into Trump family, White House ballroom and Epstein if they win the House

2026-09-13T10:30:29.873Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/13/politics/democrats-trump-investigations-midterms

With two months until the midterm elections, Democrats are laying the groundwork to launch far-reaching investigations into the Trump administration and preparing for high-stakes court battles if they win control of the House of Representatives in November.

President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, his White House ballroom project, his family’s business dealings and the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files will be among the top targets of investigations if Democrats take back the House, according to conversations with over a dozen Democratic lawmakers and aides.

Democrats don’t want to squander the opportunity to act as a check on Trump if they reclaim the majority and say they have learned a lot since the last time the party controlled the House while Trump was in office. Few say they are interested in launching an impeachment process on day one, and many instead are eyeing a new tool that would be at their disposal to try to quickly compel the testimony and documents they seek: lawsuits.

In the majority, Democrats would have the ability to sue the Trump administration in a more effective way since they have not had standing to do so in the minority. Whether it is compelling testimony from a top administration official, escalating a fight over obtaining documents or trying to halt the construction of Trump’s White House ballroom, Democrats plan to be strategic and aggressive about taking their fight to court.

“We’re going to use every tool in the toolbox and we will have certainly a lot more authority to get ourselves into court in the majority than we did when we were in the minority,” Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, who is in line to lead the powerful House Judiciary Committee, told CNN.

“We are not taking no for an answer in terms of getting the evidence we need,” Raskin said.

Raskin has already launched investigations into allegations of corrupt government contract deals at Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm and on the Trump administration’s pardon policy. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, wants to interview the president and first lady as well as top officials like Vice President JD Vance and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles about how the administration has handled the Epstein matter. Garcia also wants to interview Kushner and Trump family members about their business dealings.

Democratic Rep. Adam Smith plans to probe the Trump administration’s decision to go to war with Iran and US strikes on alleged drug boats atop the House Armed Services Committee. Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman is laying the groundwork to investigate Trump’s ballroom and other construction projects on the House Natural Resources panel.

Even in the minority on the House Homeland Security Committee, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson has tried to get answers on the administration’s deportation efforts and the practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And that’s without committee gavels, subpoena power, and the standing to sue in court — all of which House Democrats will gain if they win the majority.

For now, Lawmakers in line to run committees are working aggressively to outline their top investigative priorities, jockeying for who will investigate what and trying to coordinate an overarching plan on ambitious investigative targets.

Democratic leadership and committee teams are preparing to launch an aggressive hiring push if they win in November to be ready for the onslaught of investigations they have planned. One of the most important roles will be who Democrats select to be their in-house general counsel, who will help Democrats navigate lawsuits and the courts.

“If you’re a highly qualified, experienced lawyer or senior staffer out there that wants to be part of this historic moment of accountability think about coming back to the Capitol and being part of this team because we will be staffing up,” Huffman told CNN.

Democrats have laid the groundwork through the creation of a legal task force, which has already racked up wins even with the party in the minority, including successfully stopping the Trump administration from blocking lawmakers from making announced oversight visits to federal immigration detention facilities.

“Should Democrats get the gavel in either chamber, we expect sustained oversight across a sweeping range of issues and entities. Companies and institutions should use the time they have now to prepare for that scrutiny,” said Emily Loeb, a partner at the law firm Jenner & Block, whose team has already been contacted by companies preparing for congressional investigations.

Of course, there’s no guarantee of success in the courts. But Democrats say they are not deterred by that, including a recent decision by the Supreme Court that cleared the way for Trump to continue construction of his massive new ballroom project at the White House, concluding that a preservation group lacked the legal right — known as standing — to challenge the project.

“Donald Trump will not be able to run out the clock on these illegal construction projects because his buddies on the Supreme Court bounced a case for lack of standing,” Huffman said.

But bringing an issue to court would just be one option at the party’s disposal.

Anticipating roadblocks from the Trump administration, Democrats also plan to rely heavily on requests for information from the private sector, which they say would not be beholden to the same executive privilege restrictions Trump may invoke on government officials asked to comply with congressional requests or subpoenas.

And Democrats say they have already developed relationships with multiple whistleblowers both inside and outside the government who they would also rely on in the majority if they can’t get the answers they seek directly from Trump administration officials.

Introducing legislation would also be a component of the investigative agenda, including trying to give Congress a role in the enactment of the 25th Amendment, imposing stricter requirements barring a president from profiting from a foreign government, and permanently eliminating the “anti-weaponization” fund.

Raskin was the lead manager for Trump’s second impeachment trial in February 2021, and does not think impeaching Trump should even be in the initial conversation if Democrats reclaim the majority in November, given the chances of conviction in the Senate are so slim.

“I’ve not heard a single person say to me that they think our top priority should be impeachment of Donald Trump,” Raskin told CNN. “He hasn’t been convicted, and the chances of conviction on even his most gross and undeniable offenses against the Constitution are slim because he exercises even more authoritarian control over the Republican Congress than he did in the last impeachment.”

Garcia, meanwhile, said his focus is on finding evidence of what he says is Trump’s corruption.

“Trump commits an impeachable offense every week. But our job is to stop Trump, to stop his agenda. That’s job number one. So, for us, our job is to (do) investigations and building a case as to why this is the most corrupt person ever to serve,” he told CNN.

But even if impeachment turns out to not be most effective strategy as conviction remains unlikely in the Senate, Smith argued that Democrats should not shy away from making the case for why Trump should be impeached: “I’m going to be all in favor of pushing that argument.”

And while Democratic leaders have not endorsed impeachment, there is still pressure to pursue it within the rank-and-file.

Dozens of Democrats supported the launch of a formal impeachment debate back in June 2025.

One of those Democrats to vote back in June, Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari, told CNN she supports impeaching Trump but is more focused on showing accountability.

“I do hear a lot from my constituents about how we need to really prosecute if there are crimes that have been committed and people want to see people in power go to jail if they’ve committed crimes. It’s really that simple,” she told CNN. “We think now that there could never be another Donald Trump. There could easily be another Donald Trump. There could be a worse version of Donald Trump. And if we don’t show that there are consequences, then people also just won’t trust government.”

In her view, the mistake Democrats made after the past impeachments, which occurred before she assumed office, was trying to go back to normal afterward.

“I think in many ways that allowed Trump 2.0 to be so much worse because they thought they could get away with the worst possible things and nothing happened and in fact, he ultimately was re-elected again,” Ansari said.

Another one of those Democrats to vote back in June of last year, Rep. Mark Pocan, who is in line to chair the subcommittee that oversees the White House budget and the now defunct Department of Government Efficiency, now says Democrats need to not get ahead of themselves.

“I think we’ve got to do our investigation work first and that’s oversight work” Pocan said.

It’s a delicate balance that Democrats are trying to strike as members actively discuss how to deliver accountability without rushing into anything.

“Everyone’s got an axe to grind with this administration,” Democratic Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, who serves on the Oversight Committee, told CNN. “I think there are definitely people who, the first thing they want to do is start impeaching Trump. We’ve already had that happen this Congress. I just want to make sure if we do impeachment, that’s it’s going to be an ironclad case.”

Wanting to be strategic about how to investigate Trump, some Democrats say that momentum for impeaching Trump cabinet officials, particularly Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, could take off first.

“Impeaching this president has caused his supporters to dig in even harder. And his party members to dig in and defend him even harder,” Democratic Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, who serves on the House Judiciary Committee told CNN. “I suspect that some of those peripheral impeachment efforts might move sooner.”

Many Democrats, though, argue the entire conversation about a potential future investigative agenda is premature and the focus now is on winning back the House with a sizable majority and keeping up hope that the Senate could also be in play.

Democrats say they will also be proactive in trying to tie any oversight work to their efforts to address the affordability concerns that many people face, in an effort to combat criticism that their investigations would be squarely about going after Trump.

“I don’t think they’re incompatible. You cannot address the cost of living without the impact of corruption on the American public. So, I think they’re hand in hand,” Democratic Rep. Joe Morelle, who is leading the task force to create the anti-corruption agenda for Democrats if they win the majority, told CNN.

In the aggressive pursuit of oversight, some Democrats are wary of the caucus losing sight of its affordability message. Making that connection between Democrats’ affordability and anti-corruption agenda is a critical goal for the party this fall in the final sprint ahead of the midterms.

“If we are entrusted with the majority, we have to meet the moment to turn the ship around,” Democratic Rep. Chris Deluzio told CNN. “We have to take the economic fight front and center and we cannot only be doing oversight.”

If they win the majority, House Democrats will also have to balance their efforts to investigate the Trump administration with the reality that Democratic leadership will still have to work with the White House on various issues to ensure basic functions of the government, like keeping the government funded, can continue.

Democrats were split after House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries recently took a private meeting with Kushner. But many said later they felt reassured after hearing the explanation from the Democratic leader, who said Kushner asked for the meeting and he took it “to discuss the affordability crisis,” and said even if Jeffries were to continue taking meetings with administration officials it would have no bearing on Democrats’ plans for aggressive oversight, even of Kushner.

Instead of narrowing their list of investigations, the party is warming to the idea of conducting multiple, even overlapping, investigations at once.

In 2019, Democrats coalesced around an investigation that culminated in the first impeachment of Trump over allegations that the president pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals while withholding US security assistance and a White House meeting.

But in the current environment, Democrats want to be more dynamic and are prepared to have multiple hearings on different issues a day.

“We’ve got to move fast and that means it can’t all live in two committees,” a Democratic aide told CNN. “In order to make people feel like real accountability is happening, you need to have a volume and that amount of content needs to be tuned to different audiences so that people actually see it or they won’t believe we are doing anything.”

Still, other Democrats are looking to leadership for coordination as many committees have overlapping investigative targets, with Smith telling CNN, “it’s going to have to be a coordinated effort, not something that each committee is going to be flying off on their own.”