Analysis: It’s been a huge week for the January 6 investigation
Its court battle to get documents from former President Donald Trump’s administration is intensifying, and it is homing in on aides of former Vice President Mike Pence, who was a target of the insurrectionists.
The committee’s focus points have dripped out over the course of months. Key lines of inquiry appear to include:
Will Pence aides talk? According to the report, they “may be willing, either voluntarily or under the guise of a ‘friendly subpoena,’ to provide critical information on how Trump and his allies tried to pressure the former vice president to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”
What might they know? Key aides like retired Gen. Keith Kellogg — Pence’s former national security adviser who was issued a subpoena Tuesday — were at the White House on January 6 and privy to meetings between Trump and aides who will not testify.
The CNN report goes into much more detail on which Pence aides are of interest and why.
Pence may be eyeing his own path. A passage farther down in the report is emblematic of the problem in getting any former Pence aides to cooperate. Pence is charting his own political future, which won’t go very far if he completely turns off the Trump wing of the GOP.
“Then there is the looming question of whether Trump himself might run for president again. People close to Pence have told CNN that the former vice president, once known for his unwavering loyalty, won’t wait to see what Trump decides,” write Gangel, Cohen and Warren.
What else is coming? Add that potential testimony from Pence aides to the repeated setbacks Trump has faced in trying to shield documents and communications housed at the National Archives from the committee.
Richard Nixon also tried to exert executive privilege as a former President — and that case would seem to undercut Trump since President Joe Biden won’t back his claim of privilege.
Biskupic pulls this quote from that 1977 decision: “The privilege is not for the benefit of the President as an individual, but for the benefit of the Republic.”
While she notes the court last year worried that lawmakers could harass a President and interfere with his duties with unacceptable oversight, it’s also true that Trump is no longer President. He has no duties at all.
