Democrats are weighing how to target corporations that have courted President Donald Trump’s approval if they retake the House after the midterm elections.
Semafor reported that, given Democrats’ chances of retaking the House, top Democrats are now devising how to focus on alleged corruption in the Trump administration amongst other issues in their investigative agenda.
“There’s opportunities to look at not just corporations that we think are enabling some of Trump’s corruption, but certainly corporations that are not supporting American families and not really focusing on affordability,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said he might focus on potential violations of the Emoluments Clause, which bars the president from receiving gifts from foreign powers or American taxpayers.
“The cardinal, original sin of Trump was to decide that he was going to use the presidency as a profit-making enterprise in his first term, and I would say that Congress should have impeached him for receiving millions and millions of dollars from foreign governments,” Raskin remarked.
“If we find wrongdoing, we will do our part in investigating. But right now, we just see a lot of smoke and mirrors and a lot of gamesmanship by the Democrats,” Raskin continued.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said, “Paramount should enjoy its growing news monopoly while they have it because when Democrats win back power we are going to break up these anti-democratic information conglomerates. All of them.”
“Once we take power, whoever the president is, we’re going to break up your companies,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) said.
“So all the investment you did to create these mergers are going to be for naught. Your investors are going to be pissed at you, and you’re likely going to end up getting fired as the CEO because you wasted so much money and corrupted yourself in the process.”
“I don’t think you can do like 100 [companies] but I think you can do three and start with that,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said of antitrust investigations. “You can’t do everything, but you’ve got to pick a few of the worst and focus there.”
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