By: Gregg Re – foxnews.com – November 7, 2018

From the GOP’s gains in the Senate to Nancy Pelosi’s vindication, here’s a look at some of the newsworthy wins of the 2018 midterm election.

The incoming Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has the power to open a slew of investigations into the White House and President Trump when the new Congress is seated in January, and early indications are that Democrats plan to aggressively take advantage of their new authority.

But the president fired a warning shot early Wednesday morning, declaring he would turn the tables and leverage his party’s Senate majority to investigate Democrats if they go that route.

“If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!” Trump tweeted.

Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!
7:04 AM – Nov 7, 2018

Bogging down the Trump administration with burdensome document requests and subpoenas could indeed backfire, political analysts tell Fox News, but there is little doubt that the strategy — made more viable by heightened partisanship and loosened congressional norms — would impair Republicans’ messaging and even policy goals for the next two years.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who aims to reclaim the position of House speaker when her colleagues vote on leadership roles in the coming weeks, recently seemed to threaten to use congressional subpoenas as a cudgel against the White House.

“Subpoena power is interesting, to use it or not to use it,” Pelosi said at a conference in October, referring to the authority of House committees to summon individuals and organizations to testify or provide documents under penalty of perjury. “It is a great arrow to have in your quiver in terms of negotiating on other subjects.” She added that she would use the power “strategically.” (Trump has flatly called Pelosi’s plan “illegal.”)

On Tuesday night, as it became clear Democrats would retake the House, Pelosi appeared to double down on that rhetoric, declaring that the midterms were about “restoring the Constitution’s checks and balances to the Trump administration.”

“In sharp contrast to the GOP Congress, a Democratic Congress will be led with transparency and openness, so the public can see what’s happening and how it affects them. … We will have accountability,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi has said that unearthing Trump’s personal tax returns would be “one of the first things we’d do” in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle, calling it the “easiest thing in the world” to obtain them using statutory authority granted to congressional committees under the Internal Revenue Service code. Democrats made several efforts to obtain Trump’s returns while in the minority, only to be rejected by House Republicans.

Trump would likely seek to stall those requests with legal challenges, and it remains unclear whether Democrats could publicly release his tax returns even if they obtained them for investigative purposes.

Before a rally in Indiana on Monday, Trump brushed off the threat. “I don’t care,” he said. “They can do whatever they want, and I can do whatever I want.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler, the Democrat who was projected to win New York’s 10th congressional district, warned Trump in a tweet his administration would be “held accountable.”

“Tonight, the American people have demanded accountability from their government and sent a clear message of what they want from Congress,” he wrote. Trump “may not like it, but he and his administration will be held accountable to our laws and to the American people.”

House committees can effectively hold in statutory contempt anyone who refuses to fully comply with a subpoena relevant to the committee’s legislative purpose and pertinent to its investigation. While criminal penalties, including fines and even imprisonment, are then possible with a judge’s approval, separation-of-powers issues emerge when the House tries to penalize a member of the Executive branch.

In 2014, a federal judge denied House Republicans’ efforts to hold then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of court, saying the move was “entirely unnecessary.”

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Source: Dems to flex muscle with new House majority: Subpoenas, investigations, even possible impeachment talks loom