First Lady Melania Trump is doubling down on her most controversial second-term business arrangement with Amazon, and, as The Daily Beast reported, she and the company now appear all but certain to land in the investigative crosshairs of congressional Democrats.

Earlier this week, Jeff Bezos's Amazon announced a new two-part documentary series about the first lady, titled Melania: The Series. The project will purportedly follow her activities since her husband's second inauguration and is set to premiere on the company's Prime Video streaming service later this month. The series appears to be a continuation of the documentary feature Melania, which Amazon released in theaters earlier this year to weak box office returns and scathing reviews from critics. Pairing a theatrical run with a follow-up streaming series amounts to an unusually expansive, multi-format commitment to a single documentary subject.

That film's existence fueled allegations that Amazon was seeking to win favor with the Trump family, given that it paid $40 million to produce the documentary and an additional $30 million to market it — an unheard-of sum for a documentary. Now, despite Democrats signaling their intent to investigate companies that accommodated the Trump administration, Amazon is moving full speed ahead with the follow-up project.

The decision by both sides to proceed was a subject of discussion on the latest episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, where host Joanna Coles echoed the theory from Trump biographer Michael Wolff that Melania Trump's recent public appearances have been aimed chiefly at creating content for a new documentary project.

"I think there's a lot of profound questions there," Daily Beast executive editor Hugh Dougherty told Coles. "The most puzzling thing about this, I have to say, is Amazon have given her — already she has taken $10.7 million from Amazon and had to declare it in her husband's filings... her production company got $28 million. The $10.7 million went right into the Melania Bank account."

Dougherty added that with Democrats now ready to probe "every bit of grift" connected to the Trump family and its business dealings, there is no way that the Amazon projects do not come under heavy scrutiny. Probes of this kind typically move through document requests, hearings, and subpoenas — an oversight toolkit Democrats have already drawn on by naming prospective subpoena targets.

"There's already a serious amount of money going to Melania. There was no scrutiny," Dougherty said. "The Republicans weren't doing any oversight. And that's another aspect of this election. People said, 'Hold on, your job is to hold people accountable, to be a check and a balance on power.' Now, we have Democrats who are determined. They have already said some of the targets for subpoenas. Those targets already include Donald Trump Jr. because of his extraordinary business dealings. There is no way that they are not going to go after Amazon, Jeff Bezos and Trump for this, I'm going to say, 'extraordinary' documentary. We've got questions. We've all got questions."

With Melania: The Series premiering on Prime Video later this month, the near-term markers to watch are the debut itself and whether congressional Democrats move from stated intent to formal inquiries into the Amazon payments.