Hop skip jump
The special US House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is weighing whether to issue a contempt of Congress referral for Donald Trump after the former president skipped a closed-door deposition with the panel that was scheduled for Monday.
He didn’t “skip” it. He flouted it, he snapped his fingers at it, he pissed on it.
The committee’s Democratic chair, Bennie Thompson, said that the contempt of Congress referral targeting Trump “could be an option” – though the Mississippi congressman added that the panel would have to first address a lawsuit filed against it by Trump’s lawyers on Friday. The suit challenged the subpoena ordering Trump to appear at the deposition as a violation of executive privilege.
Unemployed Florida man doesn’t have any executive privilege. He’s not an executive now.
In a joint statement with Liz Cheney, the outgoing Republican congresswoman and vice-chair of the committee, Thompson said that Trump’s lawsuit “parades out many of the same arguments that courts have rejected repeatedly over the last year”.
“The truth is that Donald Trump, like several of his closest allies, is hiding from the select committee’s investigation and refusing to do what more than a thousand other witnesses have done,” which is to testify in accordance with panel-issued subpoenas, they said.
Four Trump allies have already been held in contempt of Congress after refusing to comply with committee subpoenas.
They didn’t refuse, they just “skipped” them.
I haven’t read any analysis here, but off the top of my head it seems pretty easy for Trump to run out the clock here. Even if Congress issued a contempt referral today, by the time all the motions to dismiss and appeals and injunctions and emergency stays etc. are done, we’d be well past the conclusion of this Congress in January. The new GOP House majority will withdraw the referral and/or the subpoena (if that’s even necessary — I believe the House is considered a new body every two years, unlike the Senate) and any prosecution would probably be moot
The 1/6 Committee has done very good work, but this subpoena to Trump just came too late in the game. Maybe the Senate can convene a committee to take over the work and issue a new subpoena?