“Lawyer up.” That was the response of Robert Garcia, the Democrat who will chair the House Oversight Committee when the new Congress sits in January, to the news that his party had won the House. Two words. Not a policy, not a programme, not a single syllable about the price of groceries. Just a threat, delivered with the swagger of a man who has finally been handed the keys to the gun cupboard.
On Tuesday the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives, where CBS estimates they will hold around 256 seats, and of the Senate, where they appear to have at least 54, with Mississippi and Alaska still to be decided at the time I write this. From January 3rd, when the 119th Congress gives way to the 120th, they will run every committee on Capitol Hill, with the power to summon witnesses, demand documents and hold public hearings under oath. And, judging by their campaign, the subject they are most eager to get their teeth into is not inflation, or the border, or the war with Iran, but a man who has been dead for seven years.
I wrote before the election that the Democrats had found a cheaper way to win than having policies: smear your opponent with a dead man’s address book. By late October, according to Politico’s analysis of AdImpact data, they had spent around $36 million on Epstein-themed advertising. It is hard to say how many votes it bought. Midterm elections are usually a verdict on the President, and this one followed an unpopular war and a cost-of-living squeeze; Trump and JD Vance have themselves blamed the Iran war for the losses. Polls suggest around three-quarters of Americans disapprove of the administration’s handling of the Epstein files, but rather fewer of them, one suspects, voted on it. The Democrats will nevertheless believe the strategy worked, and politicians who think something has worked tend to do it again, only louder.
So what will they actually do? A great deal, if you believe what they are saying, and they are saying a lot.
Garcia has called the Epstein investigation “one of our top priorities” and promises to “launch right into having real public hearings” that will “centre the survivors”. Until now the Oversight Committee’s Democrats, as the minority, have mostly had to rely on voluntary, transcribed interviews, which carry no risk of perjury. From January they can compel sworn testimony and hold the sort of televised hearings that make careers. Garcia has said he wants to subpoena the Attorney General, Todd Blanche, who as Deputy Attorney General was, in the words of his predecessor Pam Bondi, “in charge” of releasing the Epstein files. Committee staff are reported to have already drafted subpoenas for Justice Department records, private banks’ Epstein-related financial records and material held by Epstein’s estate. “Day one or week one,” said one of his Democratic colleagues, Rep. James Walkinshaw, of when the subpoena fight would begin. Back in June, Garcia was promising subpoenas on “day one”. It is a promise of efficiency one rarely hears from Congress on any other subject.
