On Thursday, the House subcommittee looking into the attack on January 6 concluded its session by voting on whether to subpoena former President Donald Trump to appear. All nine voting members approved the motion, including both Republicans.
Given that over 30 witnesses in the investigation, including key Trump allies Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and John Eastman, have invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to the committee’s questions about Trump, Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. Read out the motion, describing Trump’s testimony as an obligation.
We need to talk to the individual who started this, she said. Every citizen has a right to know the truth so that immediate steps can be taken to save the republic. Subpoenas to the president are not unprecedented, but the committee members are uncertain whether Trump will comply.
Trump already evaded a subpoena in an other case earlier this year. A New York judge found Trump in contempt of court in April for ignoring a civil subpoena for papers issued by the state attorney general in connection with an inquiry into Trump’s business dealings.
After The Committee Subpoenaed Him On January 6, Trump Boasted About his Inauguration Attendance
Trump fired out a furious letter to select committee chair Bennie Thompson the day after the House voted overwhelmingly to subpoena him on January 6. To find out who was to blame for the chaos on January 6, 2021, at the Capitol and to prevent a repeat performance, a select committee has been looking into the incident from every angle.
Trump ignored the subpoena and instead railed at the committee, claiming he was writing “to voice our outrage, disgust, and protest that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many regards to be a Charade and Witch Hunt.”
He seemed to defend the targets of the committee, saying they were only denouncing election fraud “as concerned American citizens.” At a hearing on Thursday, Thompson testified that Trump “the sole protagonist of the events of January 6th. This is why we need to hear from him.”
The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, voted Thursday to subpoena testimony and documents from former president Donald Trump, a dramatic culmination of its 1½-year-long investigation. https://t.co/oI0CqSAfAk pic.twitter.com/DPrb5VlSt5
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 13, 2022
The former president attacked the committee in his first paragraph of all capital letters, declaring, “THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!” He also mentioned the size of the gathering in the letter, which included an annex of images from the throng.
There has been no success in court for the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and Trump’s appointees and nominees in the field of election security have proclaimed that this year’s election is the “most secure in history.”
Trump said, “I knew, just based on instinct and what I was hearing, that the crowd coming to listen to my speech, and various others, would be a very big one, far bigger than anyone thought possible,” so he recommended and authorised “thousands of troops to be deployed to ensure that there was peace, safety, and security at the Capitol and throughout Washington, D.C., on January 6th.”
It was, he went on, “one of the largest groups I have ever talked before,” a “very wide swath” that “stretched all the way back to the Washington Monument.” The Fake News Media “simply refuses to accept, in any way, shape, or form, the magnitude of what was taking place,” yet “the tremendous size of this gathering, and its meaning, has never been a subject of your Committee.”
