Looming showdown could end with Trump insiders in handcuffs: column

President Donald Trump will likely order his aides and former inner circle to ignore subpoenas from the new Democratic majorities, longtime political writer Michael Tomasky warned in a New Republic column, reusing a page from his first-term playbook.

Trump has done it before. After Democrats took the House in 2018, he openly vowed to stonewall their investigations.

“We’re fighting all the subpoenas,” he told reporters in April 2019.

That spring, the White House initially ordered former White House counsel Don McGahn not to testify about the Mueller investigation, setting off a court fight that lasted two years. That fall, during Trump’s first impeachment, then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone told House Democrats in a letter that the administration would not cooperate with their inquiry.

The defiance continued after Trump left office. When the House Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed his allies, Trump urged them to refuse, citing executive privilege. Former chief strategist Steve Bannon and former trade adviser Peter Navarro both ignored their subpoenas, were convicted of contempt of Congress and served four months in federal prison. Former chief of staff Mark Meadows was also held in contempt by the House, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute him.

Tomasky expects a replay.

He acknowledged that Democrats’ new majorities give them real power, including control of committee gavels, subpoenas and witness lists, and said they should use it. “But we must presume that Trump will ignore, and will order all his people to ignore, the Democrats’ subpoenas,” he wrote.

He questioned whether figures like Stephen Miller, Tom Homan or Kristi Noem would ever willingly appear on Capitol Hill to answer questions about the administration’s immigration raids. The same goes, Tomasky argued, for Attorney General Todd Blanche, Pam Bondi, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s sons, Jared Kushner, Elon Musk, former DOGE staffer Edward “Big Balls” Coristine “and the rest of the mephitic menagerie.”

He laid out how he expects it to unfold. The administration defies the subpoenas, and the Supreme Court eventually rules against it. Then Trump’s team responds, in Tomasky’s words, “fine, make us,” leaving Democrats to decide whether to have officials arrested.

“If Aaron Sorkin were writing this, they’d do it in a heartbeat,” he wrote. “But this is the real world, with the real Democrats we’ve come to know.”

Tomasky argued the real pressure would have to come from Republicans. “Twenty Democrats inveighing against Trump’s crimes won’t have the moral force with the mainstream media and with the nonpartisan public that one prominent Republican will carry,” he wrote.

He isn’t optimistic. He called the GOP members of the House Oversight Committee, which incoming chair Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) has promised to make an aggressive investigative panel, “a pretty grim bestiary.” But he said a few Republicans from districts that are now competitive might be willing to speak up out of fear of losing in 2028.

In the Senate, he pointed to Republicans up for reelection in newly competitive states, including Ted Budd of North Carolina, Tim Scott of South Carolina and Ashley Moody of Florida. He also suggested that Republicans eyeing the 2028 presidential race might decide to put some distance between themselves and Trump.