President Donald Trump's aides are preparing to shield senior White House officials from congressional investigations as concern grows inside the administration that Republicans could lose control of Congress.
Wired reported that the White House has begun to consider, for the first time, the possibility of losing both the House and the Senate as aides privately acknowledge that national polling for the president is dire.
"Oh, yeah, we're going to get creamed," a longtime Trumpworld operative told Wired. That same operative had predicted weeks before the 2024 election that Trump would carry every battleground state – which he did.
Trump's approval rating fell to 37 percent in a recent Wall Street Journal poll, the lowest rating for any president heading into a midterm since the survey began in 1990. Trump has told aides he believes Republicans can still beat expectations, in part because of internal polling that shows GOP candidates trailing by smaller margins in individual House races.
Even so, sources told Wired that Trump's team is increasingly focused on what could follow a Democratic takeover – a rapid wave of subpoenas aimed at the administration.
The White House's expected response rests on two legal protections – executive privilege, and attorney-client privilege covering conversations with government lawyers. The second could carry extra weight after the Supreme Court's 2024 immunity decision, which limited courts' ability to examine deliberations central to the presidency.
Trump has also placed several of his former personal lawyers in top government legal posts, creating overlapping layers of protection. Todd Blanche, who represented Trump personally during his criminal cases, is now attorney general. Stanley Woodward, the Justice Department's third-ranking official, was a Trump campaign lawyer and previously represented many of the president's aides. Will Scharf, Trump's former appellate lawyer, recently became White House counsel.
Aides hope the arrangement will slow Democratic investigations for years. They point to Trump's first term, when former White House counsel Don McGahn did not testify to Congress about the Robert Mueller investigation until after Trump left office.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said Trump "has created one of the most robust coalitions in political history with the MAGA movement" and that voters face a clear choice between the president's agenda and "the Democrats' extreme liberal policies and obstruction."