Democrats’ new Oversight head: Trump commits crimes on ‘weekly basis’

House Democrats picked 47-year old California Rep. Robert Garcia to lead them on the Oversight Committee, surprising the many internal critics who’d assumed the party was married to seniority.

“I respect seniority,” Garcia told reporters after his win. “I think our party is looking at expanding who’s at that leadership table.”

Garcia, the former mayor of Long Beach who arrived in the House just two and a half years ago, was not next in line for the job. He bested two Democrats with more time in office — Massachusetts’ Stephen Lynch and Maryland’s Kweisi Mfume. Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who’s far better known than Garcia, dropped out after getting less than 10 votes from the conference.

Democrats went for Garcia by a landslide, but the debate about how the party should approach oversight in the second Trump term mostly happened behind closed doors. The late Gerry Connolly, who won the job while battling cancer, served less than six months as the ranking member, and was unable to do the sort of aggressive media outreach that GOP chairman James Comer does every day.

What’s Garcia going to do differently? He discussed that, and this is an edited transcript of the conversation.

David Weigel: Right now, Oversight is dealing with the Republican investigation of Biden’s acuity and use of an autopen — Trump waiving executive privilege so that Biden officials can be interviewed by the committee. What’s your strategy for responding to that?

Robert Garcia: I actually participated yesterday in some of the first deposition, and I think that what’s important is that there’s nothing that has been produced. No new information, no new evidence, no wrongdoing by President Biden. Obviously, this is going to continue, but it’s clear: What they’re trying to essentially do is relitigate the past, attack President Biden, which is their favorite thing to do, while giving billionaires more tax cuts and destroying Medicare and Medicaid.

So is the strategy to show up for these hearings and defend the Biden White House? Or to say, this is ridiculous?

Look, we don’t know what they’re actually planning on doing. What we do know is that this is a complete sideshow. We already saw their initial impeachment stunt that went nowhere in the Oversight Committee. The American public wants us to focus on lowering costs, and they are relitigating what Joe Biden may or may not have said or did years ago.

When you won this job, Republicans started highlighting your work as a Biden campaign co-chair in 2024, defending Biden — basically, roping you into the investigation. Do you regret any of the stuff that you were saying as a surrogate for Biden defending his ability to run again?

No. I was proud to co-chair the Biden-Harris campaign. I’m proud of the president and the vice president’s record of the last four years. You want to compare the infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, to this mess? Sure. I’ll have that debate.

Have the GOP’s Oversight investigations been effective? Sometimes, Republicans will say that they poured resources into investigating Biden, and investigating Hillary Clinton, and the work made them less electable. Did it work? Did they model anything you’d want to try?

I think their strategy has been just to distract from the real issues that the American public care about. They’ve spent their time attacking Joe Biden’s family. They’ve focused, in this Congress, on DOGE and Elon Musk, which has been largely unpopular with the American public. What we’re going to do on Oversight is actual, real work. The Republican majority on the committee has no interest in Donald Trump accepting unlimited amounts of money in these meme coin scams or these foreign investment deals, or the $400 million plane — the list goes on and on. There’s real investigation work that has to happen that they’re not interested in. They’re not doing real reform. We’ve got a great team that’s ready to work on that.

Well, to clarify one part of this: On impeachment, Jasmine Crockett ran for this job and suggested that she would pursue impeachment in the majority. You’ve suggested that the Biden impeachment inquiry last year was a huge waste of time. So how do you see impeachment in the context of what the committee’s going to do?

Obviously, President Trump has been impeached twice — and let’s be clear, he commits crimes on a weekly basis and violates the Constitution consistently. I think impeachment is so serious, and such a monumental debate. It happens not just in Congress, but across the country. That’s a decision that needs to be driven by wide consensus in the caucus and our leadership.

And that’s not where we’re at right now. Right now we’re focused on stopping these massive cuts to health care and food assistance, and this billionaire gift and transfer of wealth. That’s what we’re focused on. That certainly is going to be the focus for Democrats on this committee.