Since the midterm elections, one refrain has been echoing around D.C.: This Congress will be focused on oversight. Yet, there is a growing belief that the oversight performed by House Democrats will be almost exclusively focused on the Trump administration, and that little oversight will be aimed at the private sector.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re about to enter the most free-fire environment for House oversight of the private sector in years.

It is true that Democrats have announced an aggressive agenda to investigate the Trump administration. From questions about President Donald Trump’s own taxes, to questionable foreign policy decisions, and even questions about the separation of immigrant children from their parents, Democrats plan to comb through just about every agency’s actions hunting for improprieties.

Executive privilege

These efforts will quickly hit a brick wall, however, in the form of executive privilege.

Under long-standing precedent, presidents are allowed to withhold certain information from congressional requests by deeming the information to be part of executive privilege. The logic underpinning this concept is that presidents need to be able to receive candid advice from aides to capably govern the country.

The catch to this is that the president and his counsels determine what is or is not executive privilege. And for the last several decades, presidents of both parties have extended the use of executive privilege to cover large swaths of information.

Under Trump, there have been few explicit announcements that information is being withheld on the grounds of executive privilege so far, but there has also been little need. Until early this month, Democrats did not have subpoena power in Congress.

But there are already reports that the White House is planning to make extremely aggressive use of executive privilege to thwart House Democrats’ oversight efforts, pushing the envelope even compared with past administrations.

If the White House chooses to aggressively invoke executive privilege, House Democrats will largely be stuck.

They are empowered to sue in court and claim that the White House is overreaching its constitutional rights by improperly invoking executive privilege. Such suits rarely succeed, however, because courts dislike becoming involved in “political questions” — fights between the executive and legislative branches.

And such suits take a very long time. A suit during the final two years of the George W. Bush administration over a claim of executive privilege involving the actions of Karl Rove regarding the firing of U.S. attorneys was not resolved until 2009, when the matter largely became moot by virtue of that presidency having ended.

The Trump White House knows this, and in its efforts to primarily block all oversight through the 2020 presidential election, it will be able to delay and flummox House Democrats’ efforts to directly investigate the Trump administration.

Another card

But House Democrats have another card they can play: searching for communications between the private sector and the Trump administration.

It is already well-known that the Trump administration frequently works with private-sector entities to craft government policy, with many of these efforts occurring semi-secretly. While any internal Trump administration communications about policy could theoretically be shielded from oversight by executive privilege, executive privilege may not be used regarding communications with non-administration entities.

In other words, while efforts to seek oversight of the Department of Homeland Security’s internal actions regarding migrant children could be blocked by executive privilege, communications between DHS and private companies about crafting or implementing policy could not be. The same goes for conversations with oil companies about off-shore drilling, financial companies about deregulation, or aerospace companies about defense contracts.

It is therefore likely that efforts to investigate the Trump administration will end up ricocheting and becoming investigations of the private sector in an effort to perform oversight of the Trump administration.

Yet, this is not the end of the risks to the private sector.

As House Democrats begin to look into private-sector communications with the Trump administration, it is likely that they will discover new leads for investigation unrelated to the administration.

Investigations are dynamic

As any congressional investigator will tell you, investigations are dynamic. A staffer looking into one questionable contract or pattern of discrimination in one industry may stumble across a completely different potential scandal. In such a situation, at best, the investigation pivots to the new issue. More commonly, the investigation branches and pursues both.

Finally, it is accepted that Congress hasn’t been focused on investigations into the private sector in nearly a decade, in large part because it was not a major priority of the previous House majority.

While the Senate spends time on nominations when it is not legislating, in the House, non-legislative time is largely spent on investigations. That means there is a wealth of topics to mine for investigative letters and hearings.

While the Trump administration may be in the new House majority’s sights for now, it’s not likely to remain the top target. In short order, the private sector is likely to become the top target for oversight by the House, and the oversight is set to be some of the most aggressive in years.