The panel’s attempt to reach deep into Trump world and behind the scenes in the West Wing on January 6 kicked into higher gear in the days before Christmas, offering new insight into its areas of focus. Trump responded by stepping up his own strategy of defying the truth. It is now clear committee members are trying to build a detailed picture of exactly what Trump said, did and thought in the days leading up to the insurrection and in the hours when it raged on Capitol Hill after he incited the mob with fresh election fraud lies.
Trump associates who don’t want to testify are relying on his expansive claims of executive privilege, which many legal scholars view as dubious, to avoid saying what they know about the Capitol insurrection. Two days before Christmas, Trump, who has a long history in and out of office of using the legal system to avoid and delay accountability, went to the Supreme Court, appealing to the conservative-majority he helped construct to block the release of White House documents to the committee. Trump asked the nation’s top bench to conduct a full review of the case to stop the release of speech notes, activity logs and schedules and to put a lower court ruling allowing them to be handed over on hold.
The committee quickly responded, seeking to head off an attempt by the former President to jam it in a long legal battle, asking the court to say by the middle of next month whether it is taking the case. Trump’s legal team argues that it is vital for future presidents to be confident that their deliberations with advisers will be kept confidential even when they have left office. But President Joe Biden, with whom questions of asserting executive privilege now rest, has argued that it is vital for the nation to achieve an understanding of what went on during the Capitol riot and has refused Trump’s claims. The idea that the twice-impeached former President is acting in defense of the office that he often compromised with abuses of power and used to pursue personal goals is hard to read with a straight face. But it threatens to unleash a constitutional wrangle that could frustrate the committee’s attempts to clarify Trump’s intentions and actions on January 6.
The committee may be on borrowed time
The committee does not have the luxury of time. It is already clear that Republicans, who have a good chance of taking back the House in November’s midterm elections, will shut down the panel as soon as they have power.
Kinzinger is not running for reelection while Cheney is facing a Trump-backed primary challenger. Another Republican who voted to impeach Trump over the insurrection, Rep. Fred Upton, has also drawn a primary challenger endorsed by the ex-President who has given credence to election fraud lies.
“I watched people go down the Mall, and I saw them come back,” the Michigan congressman told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday, describing his experience on January 6. “And I heard the noises and obviously was watching what happened. But it was real and shocking and … it was a scary day.”
Upton’s unwillingness to buy into Trump’s personality cult, which requires fact-defying obeisance to fantasies of a stolen election, could cost him his political career. If so, he will join the growing list of Republicans drummed out of power by the former President in an operation that ensures a possible future House GOP majority will be in his thrall and is likely to be a weaponized force for Trumpism as the 2024 presidential election looms.
From the outside, it is difficult to tell how deeply the House select committee has managed to penetrate what was happening in Trump’s West Wing on January 6. While several prominent associates of the ex-President are refusing to testify, the committee has conducted several hundred interviews with people inside and outside the former administration. Not everyone has the political commitment or the financial resources to enter a legal battle by defying a subpoena. And details from the lawsuit that emerged on Christmas Eve showed that Budowich had supplied the committee with more than 1,700 pages of documents and provided about four hours of testimony. He sued on Friday night to stop the committee from obtaining records from a bank. The previously undisclosed records request is another indication the committee has made substantial behind-the-scenes progress and could at least partially derail Trump’s cover-up despite his best efforts.
The still-emerging horror of the insurrection
It is a measure of the horror of January 6 — now nearly a year on — that new details of the frantic, dangerous hours on Capitol Hill and the heroism of police officers insulted by the GOP’s attempt to deny history, are still emerging.
The power of that lie, and the ex-President’s apparent determination to win back power on the strength of it in 2024, shows why the House select committee’s effort to expose the truth is so important.