Analysis: Pressure on January 6 panel ratchets up amid new explosion
“We’re not messing around,” Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a Democratic member of the committee, told CNN’s Ryan Nobles on Tuesday, emphasizing that the Department of Justice would be put in a position to make a critical choice on criminal referrals against Trump’s associates because “unlike the last administration, no one is above the law. And so we intend to move quickly.”
Another Democratic member of the committee, Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia, said, “You will see the committee moving quickly” on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Tuesday.
And the committee’s Republican vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, told CNN the panel “is completely in solidarity” on moving fast to pursue criminal contempt charges for those who evade subpoena deadlines.
“Every single person on the committee recognizes how important it is for us to make sure that we enforce our subpoenas and that we do so expeditiously,” Cheney said.
The sense that time is finite reflects the fact that the committee — the final manifestation of a formal accounting process that pro-Trump Republicans tried to strangle — is the last chance to provide an official historic record and to find the truth about January 6 before Americans next vote in a national election next year.
Leaders of the Democrat-heavy panel previously pledged to complete the probe by early next spring, before the midterm campaign consumes Washington.
First, the committee faces several important deadlines this week, including for a list of Trump associates already served with subpoenas, as it seeks to find out what the ex-President was saying and doing on January 6 and in the days leading up to his attempt to steal President Joe Biden’s election victory.
Former Trump political guru Steve Bannon is due to provide a deposition and documents by Thursday but has said he will not cooperate, arguing that he is bound by “executive privileges belonging to President Trump.” The claim is potentially dubious since Bannon was not a White House official in January and does not appear to fall under traditional interpretations of executive privilege — a concept meant to secure the confidentiality of official advice to a president.
Another Trump associate, Kash Patel, a former Pentagon official, has a deposition scheduled for Thursday. Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is scheduled to be deposed on Friday. Both men are said by Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, and Cheney to be “engaging” with the committee.
Meadows, however, sought to politicize the investigation further on Monday, telling Laura Ingraham on Fox News that looking into the worst attack on American democracy in generations represented an effort by Democrats to “talk about anything other than the economy.”
A fourth Trump official, former deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino, also has a Friday deadline for a deposition.
Read More: Analysis: Pressure on January 6 panel ratchets up amid new explosion