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Senator Dick Durbin is seeking to keep President-elect Donald Trump’s military powers in check before he takes up the Oval Office on Jan. 20th.

The entrenched Illinois Democrat fired off a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland less than weeks before Inauguration Day to ask the Justice Department to clarify the president’s authority on a range of issues.

Durbin also asked the DOJ to rescind a number of opinions pertaining to a president’s military powers and to clarify the domestic use of military forces according to The Hill which obtained a copy of the letter.

The letter comes after Trump has flexed his power both domestically and globally after winning a decisive and historic election. The incoming president’s declaration of mass deportations for criminal illegal aliens has ruffled the feathers of Democrats like Durbin whose letter focused heavily on domestic issues.

“I request that the Department of Justice publicly release opinions and manuals pertaining to the domestic use of the U.S. military,” the letter read. “For decades, OLC has issued guidance on the circumstances in which the President may deploy the military within the United States, as well as what servicemembers may do when so deployed,” he wrote, noting that some of those documents have not been made public.

“The American people have a right to know how the Executive Branch interprets the President’s constitutional and statutory authority to use the military domestically. The need for transparency regarding these legal interpretations is particularly urgent today given the risk of domestic military deployment to suppress protests or carry out mass deportations.”

The DOJ received a copy of the letter but declined to comment, according to The Hill.

Trump tapped Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi for attorney general and is urging Congress to approve the appointment of Kash Patel to head the FBI.

Patel is known for his hard-hitting criticism of America’s top law enforcement agencies that have been accused of political warfare against the incoming president.

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