Trump’s Executive Privilege Claims Shot Down Faster Than You Can Say “Failed Coup”

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Meanwhile, the January 6 committee has been issuing subpoenas for Trump information at breakneck speed. 

Like Mark Meadows, Mike Flynn, John Eastman, and others before them, nearly a dozen Trump allies received subpoenas from the House committee investigating the Capitol attack on Tuesday. The new requests follow the six that were announced Monday, and this time include a who’s who of Trump administration assholes. Leading the pack is Stephen Miller, widely known as one of the worst people to ever set foot in the West Wing. In addition to being the architect of Donald Trump’s family-separation policy, the committee notes that Miller “participated in efforts to spread false information about alleged voter fraud in the November 2020 election, as well as efforts to encourage state legislatures to alter the outcome of the November 2020 election by appointing alternate slates of electors.” He also reportedly helped prepare Trump’s remarks at the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the deadly attack on the Capitol, and was reportedly one of the few aides Trump listened to during and after the insurrection. So he probably has some interesting information to share.

In addition to Miller, other Trump administration hall of famers subpoenaed on Tuesday include former press secretary and consummate liar Kayleigh McEnany, whose public statements about alleged election fraud the committee would very much like to hear more about, and John McEntee, the White House personnel director who was reportedly in the Oval Office when Trump discussed the possibility of seizing voting machines. (According to a new book by reporter Jonathan Karl, McEntee, a “MAGA fanatic” who was fired over a gambling habit and then rehired, became known as the “deputy president” in the final days of the Trump White House.)

Other new subpoena recipients include:

  • Nicholas Luna, Trump’s former personal assistant
  • Molly Michael, Trump’s special assistant and the Oval Office operations coordinator
  • Ben Williamson, Trump’s deputy assistant and the senior adviser to then chief of staff Mark Meadows
  • Christopher Liddell, former White House deputy chief of staff
  • Keith Kellogg, national security adviser to then vice president Mike Pence
  • Cassidy Hutchinson, Trump’s special assistant for legislative affairs
  • Kenneth Klukowski, former senior counsel to Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark

In its letter to Kellogg, the committee notes that the former national security adviser reportedly participated in at least one January 2021 meeting during which Trump insisted that Pence not certify the election. The committee said that Kellogg was also reportedly at the White House with Trump “as he watched the January 6th attack unfold and has direct information about the former President’s statements about and reaction to the insurrection.” Luna, referred to as Trump’s “body man,” was reportedly in the Oval Office on the morning of January 6 when Trump “was on a phone call to Vice President Pence pressuring him not to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

This week, Trump lost a bid to block documents from being sent to Congress in a hilariously rapid fashion. Per Politico:

Former President Donald Trump filed an emergency request to a federal judge late Monday night to prevent the National Archives from sending sensitive records to January 6 committee investigators by Friday. And just after midnight, Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected it, contending the request itself was legally defective and “premature.”

The unusual exchange, which happened in a span of two hours, comes as Chutkan is already considering an earlier request by Trump to prevent Congress from peering into his White House’s records about his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Trump sued to block the National Archives from turning the records over last month, after President Joe Biden declined to assert executive privilege on his behalf. The Archives indicated it would turn the papers over to lawmakers by Friday, unless a court intervened.

The one thing the president has going for him? That Attorney General Merrick Garland is apparently in no hurry to punish anyone for ignoring congressional subpoenas, which many of his toadies will presumably do if there’s little threat of jail time or any consequences whatsoever.

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