Democrats to Trump agencies: Keep the records or face jail time

Democrats aren't waiting for the new Congress to be sworn in. Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the House education and workforce committee and the man expected to take the chair next year, fired off a letter Wednesday morning warning Trump administration officials to keep their paperwork — or face criminal penalties.

The letter went to leaders at 10 departments and agencies under the committee's watch, according to the Guardian, including education, agriculture, labor, Health and Human Services and the National Labor Relations Board. Scott pointed to the Federal Records Act of 1950, which requires agencies to collect, retain and preserve records documenting the transaction of public business or holding informational value. He wants written confirmation by 18 November that the documents are safe.

The threat is explicit: any official who willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies or destroys records faces a fine or up to three years behind bars. Scott framed the demand as a mandate, writing that the American people have handed Congress a clear charge to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the administration.

The timing is no accident. Tuesday's election delivered Democrats comfortable majorities in both chambers, handing them subpoena power and the oversight machinery they've been locked out of for two years — a stretch in which the administration slashed the federal workforce, cut the Department of Education's staff in half and moved to trim worker protections enforced by Osha, along with federal vaccine requirements at HHS.

Scott has been circling the Education Department for months. Earlier this year he told education secretary Linda McMahon that shrinking the agency didn't return schooling to the states — it handed her the power to dismantle one of the country's strongest civil rights institutions. In September he pledged vigorous oversight of the department if he got the gavel.

He's not the only Democrat sharpening a knife. Robert Garcia, ranking member of the House oversight committee, told Republicans to lawyer up after the blue wave, vowing investigations into Trump's business dealings, the immigration crackdowns and the administration's handling of the Epstein files. The letters are out. The clock is running to 18 November.