January 6 committee gets inside Trump’s West Wing wall of obstruction

Committee chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the panel has “significant testimony” that shows the White House was told to “do something” as the crowd of Trump supporters fired up by his election fantasies smashed their way into the Capitol. Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, told ABC News of “firsthand testimony” that Trump’s daughter Ivanka, then a West Wing adviser, twice asked him to intervene in a melee in which police officers were beaten by his crowd.

The source also told CNN’s Gangel that the committee has texts and other documents that show what the President was doing and not doing at the time, including some from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The new details about there being first-hand information from inside the West Wing serve as a warning to Trump that his relentless efforts to hide the truth about a day that will live in infamy may not work. And it may deter other witnesses from holding out against the committee.

And now the comments from committee leadership shed fresh light on the motivation behind the ex-President’s quest to keep secret documentary evidence of his role on January 6, which has reached all the way to the US Supreme Court. They also explain the refusal of several of Trump’s closest aides and acolytes to talk to the committee about what exactly he was doing in the Oval Office. It is increasingly clear that those appearances might force them to choose between telling the truth under oath and crossing their old boss, who still dominates the GOP. Two such Trump allies — Meadows and his former political guru Steve Bannon — have already received criminal contempt referrals to the Justice Department from the committee and the full House. Bannon faces trial in July. Meadows has provided documentary evidence to the committee but has halted cooperation.

But this week’s events will also underscore that a year on, Trump’s enormous power over the GOP and the complicity of many of its top leaders in his voting fraud lies means that US democracy is in deeper trouble and under broader assault than ever.

A widening picture of dereliction of duty

Thompson’s and Cheney’s comments will also fuel a growing impression that the committee, which has conducted several hundred interviews, has built a detailed behind-the-scenes picture of what went on inside Trump’s West Wing on an…

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