Today is going to be a crucial day in Donald Trump’s criminal scandals
We don’t know precisely how today is going to play out, and we’re not in position to guess. But we do know that something big is going to happen today, and perhaps a whole lot of somethings, though we can’t tell you whether any of it’ll play out in public today or not. The thing is, today is the day where the unstoppable force meets the supposedly immovable object.
That’s right, today is deadline day for those document requests that the House Judiciary Committee sent to eighty-one Trump related people and entities. The committee publicly stated last week that at least some of the people involved have already turned over all of the documents they’ve been asked for, without naming names. That leaves the others in a lurch, because for all they know, the documents they’re tempted to withhold have already been turned over by other people on the list. So what happens when the clock hits the deadline later today?
We couldn’t begin to tell you, and that’s the intriguing part. Because at least some people are going to refuse to comply, we should see quite a number of subpoenas go out late today or early tomorrow accordingly. These subpoena fights will play out in court, some of them more quickly than others, and we’ll see who ends up being held in contempt of Congress over it. But that’s only the known part of the equation. The kicker is what’ll happen with the documents that have been turned over.
If the committee isn’t bluffing and it already received some of the requested documents last week, then it already knows what it wants to pursue next. We could see a second and more detailed round of document requests go out today, including to people who weren’t on the initial list. We could also see the committee begin making certain things public today or tomorrow, in order to rattle the cages of some of the people involved, in the hope of pressuring them into becoming cooperators.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report