Capitol attack panel in race against time as Trump allies seek to run out clock

Republicans are widely expected to do well in this year’s midterm elections in November and, if they win control of the House, that would give them control to shut down the investigation that has proved politically and legally damaging to Trump and Republicans.

The select committee opened its investigative efforts into the 6 January insurrection, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win, with a flurry of subpoenas to Trump officials to expedite the evidence-gathering process.

But aside from securing a cache of documents from Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the select committee has found itself wading through molasses with Trump and other top administration aides seeking to delay the investigation by any means possible.

The former US president has attempted to block the select committee at every turn, instructing aides to defy subpoenas from the outset and, most recently, launching a last-ditch appeal to the supreme court to prevent the release of the most sensitive of White House records.

His aides are following Trump in lockstep as they attempt to shield themselves from the investigation, doing everything from filing frivolous lawsuits to stop the select committee obtaining call records to invoking the fifth amendment so as to not respond in depositions.

The efforts amount to a cynical ploy by Republicans to run out the clock until the midterms and use the election calendar to characterize the interim report, which the bipartisan select committee hopes to issue by the summer, as a political exercise to damage the GOP.

The select committee, sources close to the investigation say, is therefore hoping for a breakthrough with the supreme court, which experts believe will ensure the panel can access the Trump White House records over the former president’s objections about executive privilege.

“I think the supreme court is very unlikely to side with Trump, and part of it is the nature of executive privilege – it’s a power belonging to the President,” said Jonathan Shaub, a former DoJ office of legal counsel attorney and law professor at the University of Kentucky.

“It’s hard to see how a former president could exercise constitutional power under a theory where all the constitutional powers are vested in the current president, so I think Trump is very likely to lose or the court may not take the case,” Shaub said.

Members on the select committee note that several courts – the US district court and the US appeals court – have already ruled that Biden has the final say over which White House documents are subject to executive privilege, and that the panel has a legislative purpose.

A victory for the select committee at the supreme court is important, members believe,…