Will Scharf Is the Search: the White House Counsel's Letter Warns Democrats That Oversight Probes May Amount to 'Blatant Criminality'
The No. 5 search in America at midday is a lawyer's letter. White House counsel Will Scharf wrote Monday to Rep. Robert Garcia - the Democrat in line to chair Oversight - and Garcia answered that Congress's investigative powers do not need the White House's permission.
By Wednesday afternoon, the fifth-most-searched name in America was a White House lawyer. 'Will scharf' sat at No. 5 on the U.S. Google Trends board after the Associated Press reported that Scharf, the White House counsel, had issued a written warning to Democrats over their planned probes into the Trump administration - going as far as claiming that such investigations, a standard oversight function of Congress, may amount to 'blatant criminality.'
The letter, dated Monday, went to Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee and, as the AP account puts it, the man who most likely will chair the powerful panel in the new Democratic-controlled Congress that takes over in January. The warning therefore is not aimed at a probe that exists yet; it is aimed at the oversight agenda of a committee whose gavels have not yet changed hands, and it frames the investigations themselves - before any subpoena - as potential crimes.
Garcia answered in the terms the fight will be conducted in. It appears, he said in response to the letter, that Donald Trump has something to hide, and he stressed that Congress's investigative powers do not need the permission of the White House. Between the two statements sits the whole of the next two years in Washington: a Democratic Congress elected to investigate, a White House pre-arguing that investigation is illegitimate, and a counsel's letter as the opening filing.
For Houston readers the practical stake is oversight itself - the committee Garcia is in line to chair is the House's general-purpose investigative panel, and its docket reaches every federal program that touches this city, from disaster aid to immigration enforcement. Whether the White House's criminality framing survives contact with the subpoenas is January's story. Wednesday's story is simpler: the letter is written, the answer is public, and the country is searching the lawyer's name.
