As Democrats prepare to take back the gavel on major investigative committees in the next Congress, outside groups are urging them to focus oversight resources on cost-of-living and corporate figures rather than President Donald Trump.
Such an approach could resonate more with voters, according to several groups and individuals who develop oversight plans and advise members of Congress. When Democrats take control in January, they are expected to launch a myriad of investigations into companies in the technology, cryptocurrency and prediction markets industries that do business with the Trump administration.
“We were pretty worried that Democrats would repeat the same mistakes they made in 2019, when they had a big new majority and spent more than a year on impeachment,” Alex Jacques, senior vice president of policy, advocacy and research at the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative, told CNBC on Thursday.
“This issue never really resonated with people. Donald Trump was more popular the day the impeachment ended in the Senate than he was when it began in the House,” he said.
Several Democratic advocacy groups and strategists expressed similar sentiments to CNBC. They are calling on Democrats, who hold sizable majorities in both chambers and have an ax to grind against the Trump administration, to show restraint. Jack and others said the focus should be on affordability and avoid the mistake of spending too much time trying to remove the president.
“Voters don’t want us to be investigated just for political retribution. That’s not healthy for us as a democracy. This has implications for a lot of what Mr. Trump himself has done,” said Lucas Holtz, senior political adviser at Third Way, a center-left think tank that is in close contact with Democratic leaders on oversight and other aspects of the legislative agenda. “I hope Democrats will learn a lesson from President Trump and investigate this responsibly in a way that will lead to a living wage.”
This strategy is supported by a recent poll conducted by Groundwork and polling firm Hart Research and shared exclusively with CNBC.
It found that two in three voters think investigating corporate greed should be a top priority, compared with 58% who think Congress should prioritize Trump’s personal corruption.
Jack also said that in focus groups conducted by the think tank, there was clear anger directed at CEOs and business leaders who felt voters were being exploited.
“A lot of people were pessimistic…what the outcome of that oversight would be is they want reparations. They want CEOs in jail, they want people to resign, they want prices to go down,” Jack said.
“We were quite shocked, especially in the focus groups, by how long the prison sentences for CEOs were,” he added.
Duty to investigate
It remains to be seen whether Democrats will follow that advice.
House and Senate leaders are laying out the foundations for their legislative and investigative agendas, and some would-be chairmen of major committees are considering who and what to target. They have so far compiled a long list of targets, including Mr. Trump and his family, cabinet members, major banks and tech companies.
For example, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon is expected to lead the Senate Finance Committee and is already preparing an ambitious oversight agenda.
A person familiar with the matter told CNBC on Thursday that the committee will conduct an investigation. JP Morgan ChaseThe bank’s relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, specifically the decisions made by Mary Callahan Erdoyes, CEO of JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management division. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because no investigation into the country’s largest bank has been announced.
The news comes a day after Wyden said in a statement that the commission’s top priorities are “affordability for us and accountability for them.”
Wyden said the committee will redouble its efforts to ensure billionaires pay their fair share of taxes, address “corporate pressure on our health care system,” and reaffirm Congress’ authority over trade. He also vowed to target “special interests” who have been collusive with President Trump for the past two years.
Incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) also singled out Epstein as a potential source of information in the investigation, particularly the Justice Department’s alleged cover-up of human trafficking operations. Raskin also said the committee could investigate President Trump’s $1.8 billion “legal fund.” An attempt by the president to pardon himself, his family, and their business. and a violation of the Emoluments Clause by President Trump and his Cabinet, which prohibits federal employees from accepting gifts from foreign countries.
Another person familiar with Democrats’ oversight plans, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told CNBC that the strategy is to aggressively target companies while taking on a more traditional oversight role for the executive branch.
Any company with ties to the Trump administration could be targeted, the person said.
Democrats believe they have the authority after the election to conduct aggressive investigations into industries such as technology, prediction markets and cryptocurrencies, all of which have been pandering to or benefiting from the Trump administration over the past two years, the people said. Indeed, a CNBC voter poll showed that voters responded strongly to Democrats’ anti-corruption and affordability message that spotlighted tech leaders. The poll, conducted by multiple news organizations and based on about 100,000 interviews conducted by phone, online and in person at polling stations, had a margin of error of 0.6 percentage points.
Tech companies have publicly embraced the Trump administration, attending and donating to the president’s inauguration and, in some cases, giving him gifts. The White House has encouraged the construction of data centers while staying away from artificial intelligence, but its big infrastructure bet is now in jeopardy after data centers proved to be losers at the voting booth.
Relatively new players, cryptocurrencies and prediction markets, will also be in the spotlight, the person said. The crypto investigation will be led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the incoming chair of the Senate Banking Committee and a known critic of the crypto industry, which has spent millions of dollars on electoral politics.
Another wrinkle for cryptocurrencies is the return of Sen.-elect Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who lost his seat to Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) in 2024 after cryptocurrencies spent millions of dollars trying to defeat him. Brown was elected to Ohio’s other Senate seat on Tuesday.
The Trump family also has ties to prediction market companies, while making billions of dollars from cryptocurrency ventures.
The second official said the surveillance strategy would address the perception that companies have undue influence over and benefit from governments, as well as deter companies from pursuing corrupt practices or turning to the government.
The Democratic Party is hoping that businesses will do everything in their power to cooperate, given the election results were heavily in their favor, the person said. Helping their cause is that corporations cannot avoid Congressional subpoenas and cannot themselves be pardoned.
The oversight itself also serves as a means to achieve the goal of surfacing publicly information that could later have a material impact on the company, the person said.
Former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan echoed this point in a post on X on Thursday.
“Why do Congressional Democrats need to investigate American companies when it is their mission to achieve real economic transformation? Because investigations are a key catalyst for securing reform and legislation,” Khan said.
He highlighted the work of the House Judiciary Committee during President Trump’s first term, saying the committee “conducted 18 months of investigations into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, securing critical evidence showing how their business practices undermine competition and harm people, and laid the groundwork for both lawsuits and proposed legislation.”
