3 minPolitics
Trump Directs Justice Department to Probe Democrats Over Official Threats
President Donald Trump has ordered the Justice Department to open an investigation into alleged threats by Democrats against administration officials, including threats of impeachment and punishment.
President Donald Trump has ordered the Department of Justice to open an investigation into Democrats he accuses of threatening administration officials with impeachment and punishment. The directive was announced in a Truth Social post on Saturday afternoon, in which the president framed the alleged conduct as extortion and called for it to be prosecuted as a criminal act.
Trump named Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, as a potential target of impeachment efforts. Representatives Hank Johnson of Georgia and Deborah Ross of North Carolina, both Democrats, had backed impeaching Blanche. Ross said Democrats should begin instead with Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary. Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, is expected to reintroduce articles of impeachment against Hegseth on Monday. The president did not name Johnson, Ross or Massie in his post.
The president denied that any administration official has committed impeachable acts. He also singled out Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a Democrat, citing her October 13 remarks about what he described as "signature cases". The notes do not specify the content of those remarks beyond the phrase itself, and no reply from Slotkin is reported in the material available.
Trump further asserted that Democrats are threatening Republican donors with imprisonment. He did not identify any donor. According to the reporting, Democrats have reportedly planned to examine major Republican donors and corporations in Congress, with a possible focus on contributors to the White House ballroom project. The source material does not indicate the scope, timing or legal basis of any such review.
The dispute comes after Democrats retook control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. That shift has placed the party in a position to conduct oversight of the administration, and the president's post reflects an escalating exchange between the White House and the new congressional majority over who is pursuing whom.
Legal questions remain open. It is unclear whether the alleged threats would amount to crimes, and no evidence of Justice Department action has been reported so far. Neither the department's response nor any formal charge or investigative step has been described in the available material.
Source: foxnews.com
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