Trump Unleashes Tirade in Wake of Jan. 6 Committee Subpoena Vote

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump has yet to be sent a subpoena by the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, but he’s already unleashed a lengthy lambasting of the committee and its members’ unanimous vote to compel his testimony.

In a 14-page response emailed to his followers under the heading “Peacefully and Patriotically” via his Save America PAC account, slams the committee, calling it a group of “highly partisan political hacks and thugs” whose sole function “is to destroy the lives of many hard-working American Patriots, whose records in life have unblemished until this point of attempted ruination.”

“This memo is being written to express our anger, disappointment, and complaint that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a Charade and Witch Hunt, and despite strong and powerful requests, you have not spent even a short moment on examining the massive Election Fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump wrote.

He goes on to say the committee has “targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself.”

The letter, which is actually addressed to committee chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., then goes on at length to rehash the former president’s long-ago discredited claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

It comes with an appendix that includes several uncaptioned photos intended, presumably to show the large number of supporters gathered at the ellipse in Washington, D.C., for his rally the morning of Jan. 6 2021, and a state-by-state breakdown renewing claims that election officials and courts have both concluded are baseless.

To date, courts on 62 different occasions ruled against Trump when he brought suits seeking to challenge the election based on fraud claims. 

What Trump doesn’t address in the letter is the impending subpoena itself or any of the topics Thompson and the rest of the committee said it wants to discuss with him, presumably in a formal deposition.

On Thursday, the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6th Attack on the United States Capitol spent nearly two and half hours in what was likely its last public hearing to weave together testimony and evidence from its earlier sessions and present new details of Trump’s central role in the chaos that ensured that day.

Prior to the vote to subpoena the former president, Thompson said Trump “is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6.

“He must be accountable. He is required to answer for his actions,” Thompson said.

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the committee’s vice chairwoman, said of the information uncovered by the panel, “none of this is normal, acceptable or lawful in our republic.” 

Like Thompson, Cheney, said the panel has no choice but “to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion.”

“Every American is entitled to those answers,” she said.

Whether Trump actually ever testifies before the committee is unknown and considered unlikely.

Most observers believe he’ll simply try to fight the subpoena in court, hoping to run out the clock and see a newly elected Republican-controlled House disband the committee come January.

“A large percentage of American Citizens, including almost the entire Republican Party, feel that the Election was Rigged and Stolen,” Trump wrote. 

“To this day, new evidence is emerging as Patriots around the Country are uncovering systemic problems within their voter rolls,” he claimed. “Furthermore, Republican counties across the nation, from Texas to Michigan, Arizona to Wisconsin and more, have voted to decertify and reject the 2020 Election.

“There are many other facts and discrepancies that we are not presenting at this time due to time constraints, but that are also Election determinative. At your request, I will present these additional numbers to you, but everything already presented would change the final Election result many times over,” Trump said.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and at https://twitter.com/DanMcCue.