Slotkin's 'Deterrence Message' on Trump Administration Jobs May Undercut Future Democratic Probes

On Oct. 13, at an event at the University of Chicago, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a freshman Democrat from Michigan, said she wants her party to pursue "signature cases" against officials who helped President Trump. Her reasoning was that a few prominent prosecutions or investigations would discourage young Americans from taking jobs in his administration. "I want that deterrence message sent," she said, describing a recent graduate who might worry about "buying myself a ton of problems" by signing on.

Several weeks later, a former Trump Justice Department official is arguing that the remark could come back to hurt Democrats. Abhishek Kambli, a former deputy associate attorney general who is now a partner at Holtzman Vogel, told Fox News Digital that if Democrats win either chamber of Congress in the midterms and take charge of its investigations, anyone fighting a subpoena could point to statements like Slotkin's. "If they just throw in boilerplate language that this is for legislative purpose, anyone challenging those subpoenas will have that entire record to demonstrate that it's anything but that," he said.

The legal backdrop is a line the Supreme Court has already drawn. Congress has wide authority to investigate, to subpoena witnesses and to examine how the government operates, but the justices have held that those powers cannot be used solely to punish individuals. The court dealt with the limits in 2020 in Trump v. Mazars, a case that arose when House Democrats sought Trump's personal financial records. The decision set out a four-part test. Courts are to ask whether Congress showed a legitimate legislative need for the records, whether its request was narrowly drawn, whether the information could be found elsewhere, and what burden the subpoenas would put on the president. The court returned the dispute to lower courts without deciding whether the subpoenas met those standards, so questions remain about how the test works in practice.

Kambli argued that courts do not have to accept Congress's stated purpose at face value. "So it's not enough just to tack on a legislative purpose," he said. Judges, in his view, can look at the facts and at how a subpoena fits with the broader comments lawmakers have made. He also raised a concern beyond court rulings: that the process itself can punish. "There is the idea that the process is the punishment," he said, adding that some members of Congress intend to use investigations to bankrupt people who cannot afford lawyers. He said Trump's Justice Department would be unlikely to prosecute administration officials on criminal contempt referrals from a Democratic Congress, but that could change under a future Democratic administration.

Democrats are already preparing. House Democrats are laying groundwork for inquiries into Trump's family business dealings and possible conflicts of interest if they regain control. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., has vowed to widen his investigation into the donors funding Trump's White House ballroom if Democrats retake the Senate.

Another constitutional law expert thinks the legal risk is smaller. Michael Morley, a professor at Florida State University College of Law, said courts understand that politicians bring partisan motives to investigations and would hesitate to throw out subpoenas over provocative remarks. "At the end of the day, a court is going to be very reluctant to conclude, based on one or more members' possible subjective motivations, that Congress lacks constitutional authority to investigate," he said. He added that Mazars concerned the president's personal records, so applying its heightened standards to subpoenas aimed at other officials would be a stretch.

Still, Morley allowed that Slotkin's words are not harmless. When the legal basis for a subpoena is already shaky, he said, her language could give judges pause. "It's bad atmospherics,” he said, and could make courts "marginally less likely" to resolve doubts in Democrats' favor. He also criticized the idea of frightening young government employees who may lack resources to defend themselves: "That's just not how we want our political disputes to be handled."

Slotkin has rejected the charge that she wants to go after people simply for working for Republicans. She told CNN she was referring to officials who break the law or misuse taxpayer money, and called the criticism "manufactured outrage." What to watch is whether Democrats win control of Congress, and whether any future subpoenas, including in Blumenthal's donor inquiry, are challenged in court with these remarks cited as evidence.