January 6 Committee Announces It Has Sent a Summons to Former President Donald Trump: The House select committee looking into the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, said on Friday that it has formally served a subpoena on former President Donald Trump because it believes he is the key player in the elaborate scheme to rescind the results of the 2020 election.
The committee issued the subpoena in an effort to persuade Trump to take a deposition and submit documents under oath. Trump must submit the requested paperwork by November 4 and be present in person or through video conference for “one or more days of deposition testimony beginning on or about November 14,” according to the panel.
The subpoena will be reviewed, and Trump’s attorneys will “respond as appropriate to this unprecedented move,” they said in a statement on Friday afternoon. The subpoena is a way for the committee to lay down a flag and make it plain that they want information straight from Trump while the panel examines the attack.
Even though it is unclear whether Trump will abide by it. Trump could also dispute the subpoena in court, potentially setting up a big legal struggle that may reach the nation’s highest court, though it’s also possible that such legal action would outlive the committee’s authority.
Before the subpoena was issued, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the committee’s vice chairwoman, said at a Harvard event earlier this week that she believes Trump will comply with the law and honor the subpoena, but added, “If that doesn’t happen, then we’ll take the steps we need to take after that, but I don’t want to go too far down that path at this point.”
In contrast to prior subpoena releases, the committee made the entire subpoena it sent to Trump and the requested papers public on Friday.
Cheney and Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the chairman of the committee, write in the subpoena letter: As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-faceted effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power.
In order to support its assertion that Trump “personally planned and oversaw” the attempts to rig the election, the panel outlines the evidence it provided throughout its hearings. According to the report, Trump “purposefully and intentionally” spread rumors that the 2020 election was rigged to support his effort to annul the results and raise money.
The committee portrays Trump as “orchestrating and directing” the attempt to secure electors from fictitious states. The panel’s highlights of Trump’s pressure campaigns claim that the president tried to “corrupt the Department of Justice” by getting officials to make “false statements,” and illegally pressured state officials to rig elections.
Forced former Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes on January 6 “despite specifically knowing that it was illegal,” and pressured members of Congress to disapprove of valid electors.
In a statement Friday afternoon, Trump’s lawyer David Warrington said, “We will be handling this case as counsel for President Donald J. Trump. We are aware that the Committee has once again disregarded conventions and proper and customary procedure by making a copy of its subpoena available to the public. We will evaluate and analyze it, and we will respond to this unusual move as appropriate, as we would with any such case.”
After the committee unanimously decided to subpoena the former president, he wrote a lengthy statement on Truth Social denouncing the committee without indicating if he would comply. Also lately, Trump posted a Fox article on Truth Social in which it was stated that he “loves the notion of testifying.” Trump may, though, dispute the subpoena in court, which would certainly outlive the committee’s purview.
In its subpoena, the committee particularly requests that Trump produce any correspondence—sent or received—with more than a dozen of his close supporters who have emerged as important figures in the larger scheme to rig the 2020 election from November 3, 2020, through January 20, 2021.
Trump’s Signal communications are included in the panel’s request for communications. The committee also makes note of the fact that it wants Trump to testify about his interactions with a number of others, including those on the same list who claimed the Fifth Amendment protections when asked by the committee about their interactions with the former president.
The committee wrote in a letter to Trump, This subpoena calls for testimony regarding your dealings with numerous individuals, including Roger Stone, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, U.S. Army (Retired), John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Kelli Ward, who have now all asserted their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination regarding their communications with you.
On Friday, a question on the committee’s openness to the former President speaking was put to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat. It’s “up to negotiation,” she said on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” but she emphasized that Trump must first answer to the subpoena.
In order to decide what more questions we would want to ask him, Lofgren said, “we requested the materials first.” Trump’s central role in the complex scheme to rig the 2020 presidential election was made clear to the American people during the House committee’s most recent public hearing, where members decided to subpoena him. This was done in anticipation of the midterm elections.
The #January6thCommittee unanimously votes to subpoenas Donald J Trump pic.twitter.com/p9Cr0Sls9U 04
— Tomthunkit™ (@TomthunkitsMind) November 13, 2022
Before the subpoena voting at the hearing, Thompson remarked, “It is our duty to demand Donald Trump’s testimony.” Because several witnesses who were close to the former president used their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in reaction to their meetings with Trump, Cheney stated during the hearing that getting Trump to testify under oath remains “a vital challenge.”
Final Reflections
