WASHINGTON, Nov 8 (Reuters) – The tech sector megabillionaire Elon Musk and the newly appointed White House chief of staff to President Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, are likely to be targets of congressional investigations when Democrats assume control of Congress in January, a senior lawmaker said on Sunday.
The California Representative Robert Garcia, who is set to chair the powerful House Oversight Committee next year, after the Democrats’ sweeping victory in the midterm elections, said the investigations would focus on Musk’s involvement in the firing of federal employees by the Department of Government Efficiency last year and Miller’s role in Trump’s hardline crackdown on immigration.
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“I think there is a lot of interest, not only from our committee, but from committees across Congress, in hearing Mr. Musk,” Garcia said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Miller — whom Garcia described as the architect of an immigration policy “horrible and unjust” — was promoted to White House chief of staff, Trump announced on Friday.
“Stephen Miller is at the center of the major policy decisions taking place in the government and, as such, deserves oversight and investigation,” Garcia said.
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The crackdown on immigration, which included operations in which two people were shot dead in Minnesota by federal agents, proved widely unpopular. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in October found that only 37% approved of how Trump handled immigration, a drop from the 50% registered when he took office.
Voters dealt Republicans a historic rebuke in Tuesday’s midterm elections, but with Miller as White House chief of staff, the Trump administration is expected to continue its aggressive immigration enforcement approach, widen cultural conflicts and not yield ground to a Congress controlled by Democrats, say officials and experts who spoke to Reuters.
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HEGSETH “MUST GO”
Hakeem Jeffries, who will become Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in January, said on Sunday that Democrats will back a measure to open impeachment proceedings against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a process in Congress that could remove him from office.
Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, said he would reintroduce impeachment articles against Hegseth soon. Jeffries said he was “fully in favor” of backing that measure.
“Pete Hegseth has to go… I believe there will be incredibly strong support for this resolution,” Jeffries told ABC’s “This Week,” citing the Defense Secretary’s oversight of the unpopular war against Iran started by Trump in February, which led to a sharp rise in gasoline prices.
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The Attorney General Todd Blanche signaled on Sunday that the Trump administration is prepared to face the Democrats in Congress, characterizing threats by some Democrats to attack government authorities and their allies as “something we cannot tolerate in this country.”
“If that’s what the new leadership is going to do, we are ready,” Blanche said. “If you work in this government, you have a lawyer. It’s me.”
