The Latest: White House claims 'criminality' in Democratic oversight

WASHINGTON — A White House warning to Democrats claims their planned probes of President Donald Trump's administration — a standard oversight function of Congress — may amount to "blatant criminality." Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the oversight committee, responded by saying "it appears Donald Trump has something to hide."

The House has turned aside a resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over his conduct in office and handling of the war against Iran, which some Republicans blame for sweeping midterm losses.

More than a dozen House and Senate races remain undetermined one week after Election Day. Democrats could have 56 Senate seats when the counting is done in Alaska and Mississippi. Democrats already have 255 seats in the House, their widest majority in decades.

And Sen. Bernie Sanders said he won't support Sen. Chuck Schumer as majority leader. He said there needs to be a new generation of leadership and a vigorous debate about the Democratic Party's party's direction.

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Kyiv's delegation was expected to meet later Wednesday with representatives of Europe and NATO who were closed out of the talks. Moscow doesn't want European countries, which are concerned about Russia's conduct and broader intentions on the continent, involved in the direct negotiations.

Kushner said a goal of his Moscow meeting Thursday is to get Europeans added to the talks. Both Ukraine and Russia need clarity on postwar security arrangements, and European countries, the EU and NATO have to be involved to build consensus, Kushner said.

"Ukraine's priority is to end the war as soon as possible with a dignified peace," Zelenskyy said on X. "We believe that Europe must be represented at every stage of real diplomacy. It is essential that the United States have a strong position and exert influence on the source of this war — that is Russia."

The session was the first such meeting since February on Russia's invasion, which analysts and humanitarian organizations say has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and thousands of civilians.

"One of the positives is we agreed that we're going to have the biggest humanitarian release of prisoners, which we're going to finalize the numbers tomorrow," said Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law.

Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, and Rustem Umerov, who led Kyiv's contingent, confirmed the planned POW exchange, although Medinsky noted that the agreement was "in principle."

Kushner said he and U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow on Thursday to meet with President Vladimir Putin, then fly to Dublin, Ireland, to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Two days of U.S. mediated talks in Abu Dhabi concluded Wednesday without a major breakthrough announced on ending the conflict that began after Moscow's full-scale invasion nearly five years ago.

Hopes had been low for any significant development in the first meeting in nine months between the delegations. Russia and Ukraine have from time to time swapped POWs but have remained far apart in their demands for accepting a peace settlement.

U.S. officials say they are determined to revive Washington's peace efforts that so far have failed to deliver significant results. As well as postwar security guarantees for both countries, other key hurdles are the fate of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory and the role European countries will play in an eventual settlement.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a CNN interview that aired Sunday that "there could be" a crime to investigate if rhetoric from Democrats turned threatening, but appeared to strike a more conciliatory tone during an appearance in Missouri this week.

"Congress has oversight authority. It always has, it always will. The Department of Justice, the federal government, works with Congress to address questions they have — whether it's through subpoenas or letters — so we're not going to stop working with Congress," Blanche said. "Nothing I've said this weekend, or in the past, should suggest otherwise."

Democrats have said they want to look into Trump's real estate projects around the nation's capital and his crypto dealings with special envoy Steve Witkoff, among other matters.

Rep. Robert Garcia responded to Scharf's letter, saying that "it appears Donald Trump has something to hide."

"Congress has wide latitude to conduct investigations and oversight, an authority inherent in the power to legislate," Garcia wrote.

"The American people voted overwhelmingly for us to pass laws to root out corruption and abuse," Garcia added.

The White House has issued a warning to Democrats over their planned probes into the Trump administration, going as far as claiming that such investigations — a standard oversight function of Congress — may amount to "blatant criminality."

White House counsel Will Scharf issued the warning in a letter dated Monday to Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

Garcia, who most likely would chair the powerful panel come January, warned Trump officials to "lawyer up" after his party's stunning victories.

In response, Scharf wrote that "threats to executive branch officials designed to deter them from public service, or process designed merely to abuse or instill fear in the recipient may cross the line into blatant criminality."

Democrat Mary Peltola led Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan by about 4,250 votes in Alaska's Senate race on Wednesday morning, with an estimated 84% of the vote counted.

The final absentee ballots mailed back from outside the U.S. are accepted as late as Nov. 18, 15 days after Election Day.

Ranked choice voting could also affect the timeline. Peltola is about 1 percentage point short of the majority needed to win outright. If neither candidate wins a majority, the race will proceed to ranked choice tabulation on Nov. 18. The state's "target date" for certifying the election results is Nov. 25.

Recounts in Alaska are automatic only in the event of a tie vote. Candidates may also request a recount within five days of the state's certification.

An Alaska state judge says he expects to issue a swift decision in a lawsuit filed by the campaign of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola.

Her campaign is seeking a comprehensive list of absentee voters whose ballots are being rejected, so it can ensure all qualified voters in last week's election have their ballots counted as the tallying of absentee, early in-person and other ballots continues.

Attorneys for the state say the information the campaign has requested would violate voter privacy. The campaign of Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan agrees with the state's position, but says that if the lists are shared, they should be shared equally.

The Senate races in Alaska and Mississippi remain too early to call.

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Publicly available information about Alice Huang is scant. It remains unclear how long her affair with the Nvidia founder lasted.

She was a Chinese finance executive before becoming involved in artificial intelligence, data centers and computer chips.

In 2023, she became a director at Singapore-based Megaspeed, which describes itself as an "NVIDIA cloud partner." Last year, Megaspeed was accused of skirting of U.S. export restrictions and routing of a large amount of advanced Nvidia chips for Chinese users.

Huang previously held senior positions at the Chinese firm Shanghai Hexi Investment Co. from around 2015 to 2017, according to social media posts and records from Simuwang, a Chinese private equity database. Before that, she worked at HSBC's Hong Kong private banking arm and at CITIC Securities, a Chinese investment bank.

Beijing has rebutted claims that she was a Chinese spy as "nothing but smears against China."

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Extramarital affairs are usually private matters. Jensen Huang's has global implications. The 63-year-old is the leading face of the artificial intelligence revolution with his black leather jackets and fluff of grey hair. His leadership of Nvidia, which produces highly coveted computer chips, has given him a late-night-phone-call relationship with Trump, a promoter of the industry.

But Huang was also liaising with a Chinese businesswoman who has allegedly fed intelligence — as well as advanced chips — to China.

The woman, Alice Huang, is a former executive at the Singapore-based cloud computing company Megaspeed. It's a saga of personal betrayal, corporate espionage and high-tech development, and the fallout is spreading across Washington, with bipartisan calls for congressional investigations and the Department of Justice opening its own probe.

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U.S. futures are rising with crude still below $100 a barrel as shares of Nvidia stabilize in a brutal week for the chipmaker.

Nvidia was the single heaviest weight on the S&P 500 on Tuesday, but shares are up 3.7% in early trading Wednesday. They are still down almost 10% this week.

The company central to the artificial intelligence boom has been under pressure following revelations of CEO Jensen Huang's affair with a purported Chinese spy. The company's board announced an investigation and Trump said the FBI is investigating the affair, which Huang has acknowledged and apologized for.

Ahead of his memoir release, Biden told the magazine that he didn't know he had cancer while he was president.

"If I had known that I was feeling lousy because I had cancer," he said, he "would've not gone forward, because I don't think an 80-year-old man with cancer should be running" for president.

Biden was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer months after leaving office. He insisted he was able to perform his duties while he was president.

"I believe that on an objective basis, I was the best-equipped person to do the job," he said.

Biden argued that age itself — he was 81 in his final year in office — was not disqualifying and meant he had experience and deep personal relationships with world leaders.

His White House memoir, "Promise Me, America," will be released next Tuesday.

Trump, who for years disputed his loss in the 2020 election and publicly decried the result as having been stolen from him by Democratic forces, privately lauded incoming President Joe Biden as someone he believed would "be true to yourself and the American people."

That sentiment, along with others, was part of the letter Trump left for Biden upon leaving office in January 2021. Biden showed the note to some members of his staff after his inauguration in 2021 but didn't let anyone read it, describing it later that day as "very generous" but otherwise saying he considered it to be private.

Inclusion of the letter in Biden's "Promise Me, America," his White House memoir slated for release Nov. 17, was first reported Tuesday by The New York Times. The Associated Press has reviewed a photocopy of the two-page letter, handwritten in Trump's trademark black Sharpie on White House stationery and addressed "To '46,'" denoting Biden's place as the 46th U.S. president.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio has won a party contest to serve as House Republican leader as the party prepares for its new role in the minority and a flurry of Democratic investigations aimed at its standard-bearer in the White House.

Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, defeated Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana in a secret-ballot election of Republicans who will serve in the next Congress. Tuesday's vote was 106-73.

Jordan, 62, co-founded the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus. His candidacy appealed to those looking for new leadership in the wake of last week's election debacle and to those who like his hard-hitting political style.

Jordan will inherit a historically small House Republican conference that is only beginning to grapple with its loss of power for Trump's final two years in office. Leading the party back to a House majority in 2028 is sure to be a stiff climb, given the scope of Democratic victories.

Sen. Bernie Sanders said Tuesday he would not be supporting Sen. Chuck Schumer as the Democratic majority leader in the new Congress, setting up a seismic confrontation after the party's sweep to power in the midterm elections.

Sanders was joined by Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan at a news conference at the Capitol, and together called for a new generation of leadership and a vigorous debate about the party's direction. A number of incoming Democratic senators have echoed the call, signaling that they would support another candidate over Schumer.

"The time is now for change," said Sanders, the independent from Vermont and essentially the father of modern progressivism in the U.S. "And I will not be supporting Chuck to be reelected as the Democratic leader."

Slotkin, who said she is not actively seeking the job herself, explained that she wants potential Senate leaders to present a full plan about the new majority's priorities.

"I'm a no until and unless I see that from anyone," she said.

The House has turned aside a resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for his conduct in office and handling of the war against Iran.

The vote came as Republicans grapple with the fallout from sweeping midterm losses that some in the party have blamed on the war in Iran and the resulting surge in gas prices. But after Trump signaled strong support for Hegseth, GOP lawmakers largely stood by the secretary Tuesday, blocking the effort in a near party-line vote.

The effort was led by Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and backed by Democrats. The vote Tuesday may only delay an impeachment push against Hegseth, with Democrats set to take control of the House and Senate in January.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is expected to become the next speaker when Democrats take charge in January, stood firmly behind the push, saying Hegseth has "abused his power" and "undermined America's national security."

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