His status as former US president does not change anything: Donald Trump fails to dismiss the threat of a parliamentary commission charged with investigating his role in the assault led by his supporters against the Capitol.
In the name of “the public interest” in understanding “the events leading up to January 6,” a federal judge on Tuesday evening authorized the transfer to Congress of 770 pages of documents relating to her actions on the day of the attack.
Donald Trump, who denies any responsibility for the coup, had nevertheless invoked the right of the executive to keep certain information secret to block the disclosure of the minutes of his meetings or the list of his phone calls.
“Presidents are not kings and the plaintiff is not president,” Magistrate Tanya Chutkan retorted sharply in her ruling.
Lawyers for the Republican billionaire intend to appeal before Friday’s deadline for submitting the documents to Congress. “President Trump remains determined to defend the Constitution and the presidential office,” tweeted one of his spokespersons, Taylor Budowich.
But the judgment represents an important victory in the race against time initiated by the special committee of the House of Representatives.
Its president, the elected Democrat Bennie Thompson, has also welcomed a decision which rejects “a complaint intended only to delay and hinder our investigation”.
“Trump’s Orbit”
Composed in large majority of elected Democrats, the commission seeks to publish its conclusions before the midterm elections, in a year. The Republicans are indeed well placed to regain control of the lower house during this election, which would allow them to bury its work.
With this deadline in mind, the commission is moving forward. On Monday and Tuesday, she launched new rounds of subpoenas against relatives of the former president, including his former White House spokesman Kayleigh McEnany or his advisor Stephen Miller.
So far the former advisers of Donald Trump have not responded to the summons. Steve Bannon, considered one of the architects of his victory in 2016, even “refused to cooperate”, so that the commission initiated proceedings against him for “obstructing the work of Congress”.
It is now up to the Secretary of Justice, Merrick Garland, to decide whether he should be formally charged. Such a move is sure to be criticized on the right but could convince reluctant witnesses to come to Congress.
Without waiting, the commission has already interviewed more than 150 people, according to Liz Cheney, one of the few Republican elected officials very critical of Donald Trump who has agreed to sit on it.
The investigations “have already given rise to a larger and sharper picture of those in the government and in Trump’s orbit who participated in the planning of the January 6 riots,” said David Greenberg, professor of history at the ‘Rutgers University, New Jersey.
For him, the political impact of the investigation is, at this stage, impossible to guess, but the stakes are elsewhere. “It’s impossible to say what will happen to Donald Trump,” he told AFP. “Learning what really happened is the key. “