2026-11-11T18:26:24.590Z / CNN
多年来，共和党人不遗余力地将国会监督工作政治化， targeting 唐纳德·特朗普总统的敌人，如今他的政府却在发出严厉警告，要求民主党人不要将国会监督政治化以针对特朗普及其周围人士。
近期，在即将到来的与民主党掌控的新一届国会之间的调查博弈中，特朗普政府已两次发起引人注目的初步攻势。
周日接受CNN采访时，司法部长托德·布兰奇并未排除司法部起诉那些过度热心调查特朗普政府官员的民主党议员的可能性。
周三，白宫法律顾问威尔·沙尔夫致函众议院监督委员会，警告其不要进行即将开展的调查，并表示政府“不会被胁迫”。
这番说辞相当虚伪，毕竟共和党最近有利用政府权力打击特朗普敌人的历史，而且其做法在现代几乎没有先例。
在周三致新一届众议院监督委员会主席、民主党人罗伯特·加西亚的信中，沙尔夫警告称，民主党的监督行动“必须服务于合法的立法任务”，而非试图行使行政与司法部门的刑事起诉职能。
他还提到可能存在“出于恶意、小气、仇恨或其他任何非法动机的非法程序”，以及民主党议员发出的“滥用且反复无常的威胁”。
（加利福尼亚州民主党人加西亚回应称，众议院“不会被来自被操控的司法部或总统律师的无根据威胁吓倒”。）
沙尔夫的信与布兰奇周日的言论相呼应。此前特朗普在社交媒体上称，民主党的调查威胁相当于“最高级别的敲诈勒索”，布兰奇表示民主党可能因此被起诉。
布兰奇提到了加西亚在选举夜对政府作出的两个字的回应：“找律师。”
“如果这都不能让你感到不安，不能让你的观众感到不安，那我们国家真的需要警醒了，因为这确实让我感到不安，”布兰奇对CNN的达娜·巴什说道。
但近年来，特朗普及其盟友也向民主党发出过大量极为类似的威胁：
- 2023年，现任联邦调查局局长卡什·帕特尔警告称：“我们会追查那些编造谎言污蔑美国公民、帮助乔·拜登操纵总统选举的媒体人士——我们会找到你们。”
- 2025年5月，时任特朗普政府司法部官员埃德·马丁转发了一条帖文，内容为“找律师，打官司的民主党人”。
- 2025年10月，密苏里州共和党参议员埃里克·施密特敦促“北极 frost”调查中涉及的人物“找律师”。
- 现任共和党众议院监督委员会主席詹姆斯·科默在今年1月要求明尼苏达州州长蒂姆·沃尔兹“找律师”，因为沃尔兹任内明尼苏达州发生了舞弊事件。
不过，或许更关键的一点是：在“出于恶意、小气、仇恨”的调查威胁问题上，特朗普政府早已失去了道德高地。
特朗普本人曾打击过数十名政治对手，通常是基于不存在或近乎凭空捏造的所谓罪名。他多次承认自己无法放下对敌人的仇恨——包括上周末播出的《60分钟》采访中也明确提及此事。
2025年11月路透社的一项调查发现，在特朗普第二个任期的不足一年时间里，他已对至少470名人员、组织和机构进行了报复性打击。
值得注意的是，他的政府对几乎所有针对特朗普的重大调查和诉讼的相关人员都展开了调查。
总统曾一度明确表示，他的目的不是追究责任，而是“报复”。
“对于那些受到委屈和背叛的人，我就是你们的报复对象，”他在2023年3月说道。
他的司法部经常在特朗普的敦促下，基于极其微薄的证据对特朗普的敌人提起刑事案件。
其中几起案件最终无果而终——要么是因为未达到大陪审团投票起诉的极低门槛，要么是因为调查人员显然无法拿出证据。
这些案件包括：
- 对六名民主党众议员的起诉失败（罪名是要求服役人员和情报官员不要执行非法命令）
- 对纽约总检察长莱蒂蒂亚·詹姆斯的多次起诉失败
- 对1月6日事件证人卡西迪·哈钦斯的起诉失败
- 针对詹姆斯和前联邦调查局局长詹姆斯·科米的案件被驳回（科米后来在法律专家存疑的案件中再次被起诉两次）
- 一系列针对加州参议员亚当·希夫、美联储理事莉萨·库克等特朗普敌人的所谓抵押贷款问题的法律打击均告失败
- 对时任美联储主席杰罗姆·鲍威尔因美联储翻修工程超支问题展开的调查随后被放弃
尽管特朗普的盟友指责拜登政府对特朗普进行政治起诉，但有更多证据表明是特朗普推动了这些调查，而非前总统乔·拜登参与了对特朗普的起诉。
这些属于刑事调查，而非国会监督。但即便从国会调查来看，共和党也很难辩称自己没有做特朗普政府警告民主党不要做的事情。
在2024年特朗普与拜登预期对决之前，众议院共和党人发起了对拜登的弹劾调查，该调查经常夸大“拜登犯罪家族”涉嫌腐败的证据。他们对拜登的核心攻击之一，依赖于一名联邦调查局线人提交的未经验证的指控，该线人后来因编造证据认罪。
尽管共和党本无需民主党选票就能推动弹劾，但他们最终甚至无法获得本党足够议员的投票支持，因此这项调查从未发挥任何具体立法作用——而这正是特朗普政府如今试图给民主党划定的界限。
在同一届国会中，共和党还成立了一个特别委员会，据称调查拜登政府“操控”政府的行为，该委员会同样极大地夸大了存在不当行为的证据，最终不了了之。
不过，特朗普政府近期采取的强硬态度至少在政治上有一定意义。从理论上讲，政府可以辩称民主党在审查政府的意图上过于热心，以此混淆视听。
但民调显示，美国人对民主党与共和党处理这些问题的方式有明确区分。
虽然多数美国人认为对特朗普的起诉是合法的，但去年的民调显示，有两位数比例的美国人认为针对特朗普敌人的案件是政治化且不合法的。
美国人也对拜登弹劾调查持相当负面的看法。2023年初的一项民调显示，有20%的受访者认为共和党“操控”政府的委员会“只不过是为了捞取政治资本”。
回顾现在，美国人认为民主党掌控的国会有很多值得调查的事情。
近期民调显示，约三分之二的美国人认为特朗普正在利用总统职位中饱私囊，且存在不当获利。选举前的美联社-NORC民调显示，60%的美国人希望下一届国会将调查特朗普政府列为优先事项。
当然，民主党有可能做得过火——只有36%的受访者希望将其列为该党的最高优先事项之一——但不乏真正可调查的目标，能够取得成果。
而这正是特朗普政府似乎害怕的地方。
The Trump team’s hypocrisy reaches new levels with warning letter to Democrats
2026-11-11T18:26:24.590Z / CNN
After years of Republicans going to extraordinary lengths to politicize congressional oversight and target President Donald Trump’s enemies, his administration is now issuing stark warnings to Democrats to not politicize congressional oversight to target Trump and those around him.
Twice in recent days, the administration has offered remarkable initial salvos in the looming investigative battles between it and the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress.
During a CNN interview on Sunday, Attorney General Todd Blanche left open the possibility of the Justice Department prosecuting Democratic lawmakers who threaten to investigate Trump administration officials too overzealously.
And on Wednesday, White House counsel Will Scharf issued a letter cautioning the House Oversight Committee against forthcoming investigations and saying the administration “will not be extorted.”
Both are rather rich, considering the recent history of Republicans leveraging governmental power to target Trump’s foes — in ways with little if any modern precedent.
In the Wednesday letter to incoming House Oversight Committee Chair Robert Garcia, Scharf warns that Democrats’ oversight “must further a legitimate legislative task,” rather than trying to serve the criminal-prosecution functions of the executive and judicial branches.
He cites the possibility of “unlawful process motivated by animus, pettiness, hatred, or any other unlawful motive.” He also cites “abusive and capricious threats” from Democratic lawmakers.
(Garcia, a California Democrat, responded by saying the House “will not be deterred by baseless threats from a weaponized DOJ or from the president’s lawyers.”)
Scharf’s letter echoes Blanche’s comments from Sunday. After Trump posted on social media that Democrats’ investigative threats amounted to “extortion at the highest level,” Blanche left open the possibility that the Democrats could be prosecuted for it.
Blanche cited Garcia’s two-word statement to the administration on election night: “LAWYER UP.”
“If that doesn’t bother you, if that doesn’t bother your viewers, then we really need to kind of wake up in this country, because it certainly bothers me,” Blanche told CNN’s Dana Bash.
But Trump and his allies have issued plenty of very similar threats to Democrats in recent years:
- In 2023, now-FBI Director Kash Patel warned: “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you.”
- Then-Trump Justice Department official Ed Martin in May 2025 amplified a post that stated, “Lawyer up, Lawfare Democrats.”
- GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri in October 2025 urged figures mentioned in the “Arctic Frost” investigation to “lawyer up.”
- Current GOP House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer in January told Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to “lawyer up” over fraud that took place on his watch in Minnesota.
Still, perhaps the bigger point is this: The administration long ago vacated the moral high ground when it comes to “abusive and capricious threats” of investigations “motivated by animus, pettiness, hatred.”
Trump himself has targeted scores of his political foes, often for non-existent or thinly constructed supposed offenses. And he has repeatedly acknowledged he can’t set aside his hatred of his enemies — including in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired this past weekend.
A November 2025 Reuters investigation found that, in less than a year of Trump’s second term, he had targeted at least 470 people, organizations and institutions for retribution.
Tellingly, his administration has investigated people responsible for virtually every major investigation and court case against Trump.
And the president at one point explicitly signaled he was out not for accountability, but for “retribution.”
“For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he said in March 2023.
His Justice Department has regularly pursued criminal cases against Trump’s foes based on the thinnest of evidence, often at Trump’s urging.
Several of these cases have fallen apart — either because they didn’t clear the typically very low bar of getting a grand jury to vote to indict, or because those investigating the matter clearly couldn’t produce the goods.
That includes:
- Failed indictments against six congressional Democrats (for telling military service members and intelligence officials not to follow illegal orders)
- Multiple failed indictments against New York Attorney General Letitia James
- A failed indictment of January 6 witness Cassidy Hutchinson
- Cases against James and former FBI Director James Comey that were thrown out. (Comey was later re-indicted twice in cases that legal experts are skeptical of.)
- A series of failed efforts to legally target Trump’s foes like California Sen. Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook for supposed mortgage issues
- A later-abandoned criminal probe of then-Fed Chair Jerome Powell for cost overruns in a Fed renovation
And despite Trump’s allies having accused the Biden administration of political prosecutions against Trump, there is far more evidence that Trump pushed these probes than there is that former President Joe Biden was involved in getting Trump indicted.
These are criminal investigations, rather than congressional oversight. But even on congressional investigations, it’s pretty difficult for Republicans to claim they haven’t done what the Trump administration is warning Democrats not to do.
Ahead of an expected 2024 matchup between Trump and Biden, the House GOP launched an impeachment inquiry against Biden that regularly involved overstating evidence of suppose corruption in the “Biden crime family.” One of their central attacks on Biden relied on an unverified claim from an FBI informant who later pleaded guilty to fabricating it.
Republicans ultimately couldn’t even get enough of their own GOP members to vote to impeach Biden, despite not needing any Democratic votes. So the inquiry never served any concrete legislative purpose — the line the Trump administration is now trying to draw with Democrats.
In the same Congress, Republicans also launched a special committee supposedly probing the “weaponization” of government by the Biden administration. It, too, vastly overstated evidence of wrongdoing and went out with a whimper.
Still, the hard-edged front from the Trump administration in recent days at least makes some political sense. Theoretically, the administration could muddy the waters by arguing that Democrats are being overzealous in their intent to scrutinize the administration.
But the polls have suggested that Americans see the difference between how Democrats and Republicans have handled these issues.
While majorities of Americans saw Trump’s indictments as legitimate, polling last year showed Americans said by double digits that the cases against Trump’s foes were politicized and illegitimate.
Americans also took a rather dim view of the Biden impeachment inquiry. And an early 2023 poll showed Americans said by 20 points that the GOP’s “weaponization” committee was mostly “just an attempt to score political points.”
Fast forward to today, and Americans see plenty that’s worthwhile for the Democratic-controlled Congress to investigate.
Recent polling has shown around two-thirds of Americans say that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and that he has inappropriately profited. And an AP-NORC poll before the election showed 6 in 10 Americans wanted the next Congress to make investigating the Trump administration a priority.
Of course, it is possible the Democrats could go too far with that — just 36% wanted it to be one of the party’s highest priorities — but there is no shortage of real targets that could produce results.
And that’s what the Trump administration seems to fear.
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