Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said Democrats would make investigations into President Trump’s crypto ventures and business dealings a top priority if they regain the House. In an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt, Garcia said Trump’s children should “absolutely” expect congressional subpoenas if they are involved in the alleged schemes.

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Is there anything there that concerns you that you think Congress needs to look at? REP. ROBERT GARCIA (D-CA): I mean, it’s the biggest grift of all time, and this has got to be one of the most corrupt things that any government official, certainly an American president, has ever done. And the amount that we have to investigate on the accountability front, on the corruption front, is a very long list when it comes to Donald Trump and the Trump family. We’re talking about a president that is $ 2 billion richer. Approximately $ 1.4 billion of that, of that we know of, is around this whole crypto coin scheme that he put in place, where we have essentially foreign governments, God knows who else, folks we don’t yet know, are dumping in unlimited amounts of cash into essentially a bank deposit box for Donald Trump and his family. And the idea that there’s no real transparency here, and that an American president is allowed to do this, is not just unprecedented, it’s against an illegal, against the Constitution, and oversight Democrats will absolutely be investigating this. It will be at the center of our work in the next Congress. HUNT: So just to be clear, do you think he did something illegal, or did he just do something that looks bad? GARCIA: Absolutely, it’s illegal. We have the emoluments clause for a reason. Presidents cannot be enriching themselves off of their office. Donald Trump has turned the White House into his own ATM, whether it’s having political events there, whether it’s been selling access to the White House, whether it’s been creating this essentially crypto scheme where all sorts of folks can dump money in. He is going to country after country, followed by his sons, who are then coming in and cutting real estate deals. We know that there’s reports of the Trumps essentially being on the boards of companies, gaining enormous contracts from the federal government. There is no question that the Trumps are involved, we believe, in illegal activity. That has to be held accountable, and Americans should be outraged that we have an American president that is enriching himself the way that he is. And whether it’s the Trump stable coin, the crypto scheme, whether it’s the real estate deals, all of this, selling pardons, all of it reeks of corruption in the most corrupt administration in history. HUNT: Congressman, Americans have, of course, heard quite a bit about the emoluments clause because of some of the things that happened during the first Trump term, of course, when the president was impeached twice and not convicted. Do you think that what Democrats did during his first term with the first impeachment has made it harder to break through and hold him accountable now because people have tuned it out? GARCIA: Look, there is no question, I think, that people are overwhelmed with the amount of government corruption that exists in the White House and in D.C. Look, I think the Congress took the right approach. What he’s doing in the second term is so much larger in scale, and the way it’s moving so fast and the amount of corruption that’s happening, the first administration pales in comparison to what’s happening now. And the reality is that Donald Trump is committing an impeachable offense every single week. So the idea that we’re not going to investigate this with everything we’ve got, I mean, it’s crazy. We have to investigate every single part of this. And of all of the kind of schemes that Trump and his family have in place, this crypto scheme is the most serious because there’s so little transparency and information that the American public have. We just don’t fully understand who is giving Donald Trump all of this money and for what and if they’re getting anything in return. HUNT: Do you want to see him impeached for this? Do you want to see Democrats try to impeach President Trump if they take the House because of this? GARCIA: What I want to see is serious investigations into Donald Trump’s corruption. Look, everything, of course, is always on the table, but we’ve got to put our energy into stopping the Trump agenda and rooting out corruption and taking on the administration and the Trump family in all of these deals that are happening across the world. And so that is going to be our focus. Where that leads us, we’ll see. HUNT: Should Donald Trump’s children, should President Trump’s children expect to be subpoenaed by a Democratic House? GARCIA: Absolutely. Look, anyone that is involved in these schemes and corruption will have to come in front of our committee. I mean, look at Jared Kushner, for example. I mean, Jared Kushner has a $ 2 billion investment from the Saudis right when he leaves the first White House. Now he’s going around as the Middle East envoy, apparently, of President Trump, while still cutting deals around the world with some of these same regions and governments. I mean, that is complete corruption that needs to be investigated. We know that there are reports of Don Jr., essentially being on and involved on the boards of certain companies that are getting massive contracts from the Pentagon and from other government agencies. I mean, that has to be investigated. This has never happened before in any administration, in any presidency in our history as a country. And so it’s important that accountability is actually in place and that we tell the American public that while the Trumps get richer, $ 2 billion richer, folks can’t afford the gas, they can’t afford their rent, and they can’t afford the groceries on the table.

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