litigate this in the ordinary course of time and not ask for anything like that? then, as you quoted the archivist, if there s no binding court order, then this complaint does not take effect, and the documents can be turned over. so he s going to have to move if he wants to block it. we ll see he knows these are not good arguments. he knows this is a delay game. so we ll see if he tries to do that. he s going to have to move for this type of relief, and so he will be actually setting up an accelerated timeline because those things have to be handled very quickly and even the appeals are handled quickly. those are good points that i hadn t focused on and that makes me feel differently about the timing. norm eisen, as always, you are value added and a plus. thank you. thanks, chris. so maybe it won t be as good a delay tactic as it looks at the outset. we ll see, and we ll see sooner rather than later if norm is
committee and the law that applies, that you need to have a valid legislative purpose, what could be more important than investigating an insurrection against the united states? so clearly this is not overbroad. they re doing their job. and then on executive privilege, the complaint talks again and again about the president. but donald trump is not the president. joe biden is the president. joe biden is the one who decides whether to apply these confidentiality rules. and he said no as to the initial set of documents. so i don t think it will work. and as you point out, it s a delay game. nobody has had the chutzpah to make these arguments before. and donald trump is hoping to tie up the courts in the aspiration that congress flips and he gets out of his subpoenas. let s litigate. the delay works, because even garbage takes time to be thrown out. he s going to put it in. they re going to have to calendar it.
among private citizens. the observation we made several times on this air is that steve bannon wasn t a member of the white house, so the executive privilege presumably doesn t stretch that far. doesn t stretch beyond the confines of the white house itself, john. as you mentioned, the former president suing to try to block the records. the committee knew that this was going to happen. so now the timeline continues. very likely why they put the steve bannon subpoena at the beginning of their investigation because they know the clock could extend here, so they re trying to get this calendar going. the concrete movements tonight to watch are the vote the votes coming out of the house committee, then again on to the house floor. so a few outstanding questions, but something to watch. we have seen the delay game before. this is a new frontier. whitney wild, thank you very much. joining us to discuss all of this is former u.s. attorney and host of the talking feds podcast, harry litman
be told your executive privilege claim is denied. you don t get to claim it. how is it possible he and donald trump seem not to understand that? i think the problem is that they do understand it, joy, but they ve learned over the years that playing a delay game with the courts serves their purposes when they re trying to avoid doing something here. that s why congressmen schiff is dead on the money here and why it will be so important if the committee makes a request to the justice department to bring a criminal contempt proceeding, that would actually be a prosecution of bannon for criminal contempt that would subject him for up to a year in prison. it would be important for doj to proceed. the madness has gone on long enough. it s time to tell trump no and in this case, it means steve bannon and other witnesses need to sit down and testify on congress. elie, what do you make of the donald trump lawsuit? he s saying executive privilege
of law, but it s not going to be easy. the committee has already extended the deadline so they can continue negotiations they are supposed to be engaging with the committee. how limited are the powers of the department of justice and congress that this type of situation, in this type of situation, and where could we be if we re just waiting months and months they could essentially torpedo the committee to some extent by just not complying with this. donald trump and the people around him are playing the delay game here. and if we learned collectively any lesson from the last time this happened, congress just has to play tougher here. congress has been slow, they ve been timid, they ve been indecisive. meanwhile you have trump and his people who are willing to break all the rules. trump has lost virtually every one of these cases. he s never had a final decision