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Trump threatens gridlock as House investigations heat up

“They won’t get ANYTHING done for our Country!” the president tweeted Tuesday morning

President Donald Trump, flanked from left by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Sen. John Thune, R-S. Dak., and Vice President Mike Pencestops to speak to the cameras following his lunch with Senate Republicans in the Capitol on Wed. Jan. 9, 2018. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)
President Donald Trump, flanked from left by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Sen. John Thune, R-S. Dak., and Vice President Mike Pencestops to speak to the cameras following his lunch with Senate Republicans in the Capitol on Wed. Jan. 9, 2018. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)

President Donald Trump suggested anew Tuesday that major legislation is unlikely while House Democrats are investigating him and his associates.

A day after Democrats won control of the House, the president warned he would create gridlock in Washington by going to a “war-like posture” if he determined their probes of his 2016 campaign, businesses and presidency were going too far.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler on Monday wrote to 81 individuals and entities requesting information for his panel’s investigation.

[Trump: Cohen book pitch shows he ‘committed perjury on a scale not seen before’]

The White House Monday evening called that probe, and others by Democrats a “fishing expedition,” and Trump himself weighed in Tuesday morning.

“Now that they realize the only Collusion with Russia was done by Crooked Hillary Clinton & the Democrats, Nadler, Schiff and the Dem heads of the Committees have gone stone cold CRAZY,” he tweeted, also referring to House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

Watch: Judiciary and oversight subpoena power, explained

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“81 letter sent to innocent people to harass them,” Trump wrote. “They won’t get ANYTHING done for our Country!”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders skewered Nadler’s probe in a Monday evening statement, calling it “disgraceful and abusive.”

[What have Trump and Putin talked about? Democrats intend to find out]

“Chairman Nadler and his fellow Democrats have embarked on this fishing expedition because they are terrified that their two-year false narrative of ‘Russia collusion’ is crumbling,” Sanders said, suggesting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is unlikely to reveal evidence of coordination between the 2016 Trump campaign and Moscow.

“Democrats are harassing the President to distract from their radical agenda of making America a socialist country, killing babies after they’re born, and pushing a ‘green new deal’ that would destroy jobs and bankrupt America,” she said. “The American people deserve a Congress that works with the president to address serious issues like immigration, healthcare, and infrastructure.”

[‘Off-script’ Trump intensifies campaign to ‘destroy’ investigations]

But Nadler on Sunday said he sees clear evidence Trump has obstructed justice. The New York Democrat said a day later he believes “over the last several years, President Trump has evaded accountability for his near-daily attacks on our basic legal, ethical, and constitutional rules and norms.”

“Investigating these threats to the rule of law is an obligation of Congress and a core function of the House Judiciary Committee,” Nadler said in a statement. “We have seen the damage done to our democratic institutions in the two years that the Congress refused to conduct responsible oversight. Congress must provide a check on abuses of power.”

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