The incoming Democratic chair of the powerful congressional oversight committee said it appears Donald Trump has “something to hide” after the White House threatened criminal investigations over the party’s planned scrutiny of the administration.Robert Garcia, ranking member of the oversight committee in the House of Representatives, vowed to press on in the face of what hecalled “baseless threats” after receiving a letter from White House counsel William Scharf which warned that Democratic pledges to use to investigate the president “may cross the line into blatant criminality”.Scharf argued that congressional inquiries need a legitimate legislative purpose and cannot be used to punish targets or lay the ground for prosecutions.Garcia said in a statement that Congress’s authority comes from article I of the constitution, “not from the permission of the White House”. He described that power as inherent in the job of writing laws.“The American people voted overwhelmingly for us to pass laws to root out corruption and abuse,” Garcia said on Wednesday, accusing the administration of continuing to weaponize the government with “threats of unconstitutional attacks on Congress”.Corruption became a key issue in last week’s midterm elections.

While the economy was the issue voters named most often as the country’s top problem in the NBC News exit poll, 90% of voters said corruption was a crucial or major factor in their votes.Having promised during the campaign to tackle those issues, Democrats won back control of both chambers of Congress, and will arrive in January with their largest House majority since 2008. Trump wrote on social media that he was not responsible for the Republican losses, and later posted an image of a cap embroidered with the word “veto”.Scharf’s letter also pointed to public remarks by incoming Democratic lawmakers.

It said the Representative-elect Richard Ojeda of North Carolina wants to see defense secretary Pete Hegseth “squirm”, that Texas representative-elect Katy Padilla Stout told witnesses to “put makeup on for the cameras” and that Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona described accountability as eventually ending in jail. It also took aim at Garcia’s “Lawyer Up” campaign, saying his intent was “not to legislate, but to intimidate”.Garcia was unmoved. “We are a co-equal branch of government and will not be deterred by baseless threats from a weaponized DoJ or from the president’s lawyers,” he said.