THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

"The committee is very quickly moving to narrow in on the most important question: Trump's exact actions in and around January 6," said Norm Eisen, who served as the co-counsel on the House Judiciary Committee during Trump's first impeachment trial. "They're hitting people from the White House chief of staff on down, in and outside of the White House, who have critical information." He continued: "In Watergate, the question was what did the president know and when did he know it. Here, the question is what did the president do and when did he do it?"

Three recent moves have raised the stakes. First and most notably, on Thursday night, the committee issued its first round of subpoenas directed at four close associates of Donald Trump and prominent figures in his administration: former chief strategist Steve Bannon; former chief of staff Mark Meadows; former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino; and Kash Patel, who was a chief of staff to acting Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller in the administration's waning days. That same night, Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, a committee member, told Rachel Maddow that more subpoenas would be on the way.

Second, the Biden White House is reportedly hewing toward handing over detailed information on the whereabouts of Trump and his aides on January 6 to Congress, a move that could trigger huge political and legal battles moving forward.   

Third, and more quietly, earlier in the week, the panel announced it had brought on John Wood. This is interesting because Wood is a former lawyer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with impeccable conservative credentials. That's on top of the committee bringing on former Representative Denver Riggleman, a Virginia Republican, as a top member of the committee's staff. [...]

Trump has become more openly hostile to the committee's progress. He's given it a Trumpian nickname--the "'Unselect Committee' of highly partisan politicians"--and has vowed to "fight the Subpoenas on Executive Privilege and other grounds, for the good of our Country, while we wait to find out whether or not Subpoenas will be sent out to Antifa and BLM for the death and destruction they have caused in tearing apart our Democrat-run cities throughout America."  

Raskin, a constitutional law professor, argued executive privilege doesn't apply to former presidents. He told The Washington Post that "there's no such thing as a former president's executive privilege."

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