Select Committee Subpoena’s Trump Over Jan. 6 Siege of Capitol
WASHINGTON — The Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol formally issued a subpoena to former President Donald Trump on Friday, potentially setting the stage for a landmark court battle likely to end in the Supreme Court.
The nine-member panel issued a letter to Trump’s lawyers, demanding his testimony under oath by Nov. 14 and outlining a request for a series of corresponding documents, including personal communications between the former president and members of Congress as well as extremist groups to be delivered to the committee on Nov. 4.
“We recognize that a subpoena to a former president is a significant and historic action,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., wrote in the letter to Trump. “We do not take this action lightly.”
The actual issuance of the subpoena could complicate the upcoming midterm election for some candidates, and comes as the Justice Department continues its own criminal investigation related to Trump’s taking as many as 100 top secret documents with him to Mar-a-Lago when he left the White House in January 2021.
As previously reported in The Well News, the former president lashed out angrily in a rambling letter released after the committee voted on issuing the subpoena, reiterating, at length, long discredited claims of widespread voting fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
He has not indicated whether he will comply with the subpoena.
The House has voted four times to hold in contempt of Congress allies of Trump who refused to testify or supply documents.
Two of those allies — Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, the former White House trade adviser — were indicted and Bannon, ultimately, convicted.
The Justice Department declined to charge two others: Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, and Dan Scavino Jr., another top aide.
As reported by The Well News’ Tom Ramstack, Bannon was sentenced on Friday to four months in jail and a fine of $6,500 for his refusal to testify. Navarro’s trial is scheduled for next month.
Cheney suggested last week that should Trump refuse to testify, the committee would “take the steps we need to take after that.”
Trump did not immediately respond when word of the subpoena’s issuance became public.
Moments before, in an email, he berated the FBI and the Justice Department, which he alleges “paid a man $200,000 to spy on me,” and allegedly offered “a $1 million ‘bounty’ to try and prove a totally made up and fake ‘dossier’ about me” for “now leaking nonstop on the Document Hoax to the Fake News.”
“Who could ever trust corrupt, weaponized agencies, and that includes NARA, who disrespects our Constitution and Bill of Rights, to keep and safeguard any records, especially since they’ve lost millions and millions of pages of information from previous Presidents. Also, who knows what NARA and the FBI plant into documents, or subtract from documents — we will never know, will we?” Trump wrote.
Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue
