‘Winter has arrived’: First congressional probe targets emerge as Dems sharpen knives

Democrats are lining up their first targets for congressional investigations, and one probe could look into how President Donald Trump planned the military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The Washington Post reported that the House is laying the groundwork to investigate Trump’s use of Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, to plan that operation, according to two people familiar with the plans.

Apple, Meta and Musk’s companies are emerging as early targets, the Post reported. Lawmakers are looking at Apple over its hosting of tracking apps used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and they’re looking at Meta over its demands that local governments sign nondisclosure agreements on data center development.

Several law firms have crafted pitches to become Musk’s personal counsel, according to two people familiar with the matter. They expect the world’s richest man to face a barrage of subpoenas, and see any resulting casework as the most lucrative, highest-profile investigative work of the coming year, and some in the city’s corporate legal circles are unsure whether Musk’s current team can handle the load.

A memo from the Groundwork Collaborative, a think tank, named large tech companies, private-prison corporations and natural gas firms as “high-value” targets. The memo pointed to what those companies may have given Trump, what they may have gotten in return, and how they may have behaved.

The investigations are also likely to look different from what executives are used to. In a private online meeting Thursday, a lawyer at a prominent Washington firm warned executives that “this is a new era.”

“If your company is caught up in this oversight, it’s likely to be much more highly publicized,” the lawyer said. He pointed to the Instagram posts lawmakers blasted out after the midterms, which racked up thousands of reshares, and called it “a whole new world” for Hill oversight.

Jamie Bair of the law firm Crowell and Moring predicted that companies would be squarely in the crosshairs. Letters to the Trump administration will likely go unanswered, he said, but corporations tend to respond, and in doing so they may reveal their dealings with administration officials.

“That is the playbook you’re going to see,” Bair said.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, put it more bluntly on election night: “Lawyer up.”

Robert Kelner of Covington & Burling said clients are already hiring attorneys.

“We’ve been telling clients all year that winter is coming,” he said. “Now winter has arrived.”