by The House Select Committee on January 6 formally issued a subpoena to force former President Donald Trump to produce documents by November 4 and appears to testify in a sworn deposition before the jury on November 14, initiating a confrontation between the former. twice accused. president and the college of nine members a few months after his mandate expired in January.
In a letter to the former president, Select Committee Chair Bennie Thompson and Vice President Liz Cheney said the jury had “gathered overwhelming evidence” that Trump “personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-party effort to overturn the presidential election. 2020 and hinder the peaceful transfer of power “.
The letter from Mr. Thompson and Ms. Cheney sets out 10 separate aspects of that effort, claiming that Mr. Trump, among other things, attempted to “bribe the Department of Justice” by soliciting and enlisting Department officials to make false statements and assist your efforts to overturn presidential elections, “by unlawfully lobbying state officials and lawmakers” to alter the 2020 election results, “orchestrating and supervising” efforts to submit bogus electoral certificates to national records, and “by lobbying corruptly “on the then Vice President Mike Pence to” unilaterally refuse to count the electoral votes “during the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.
They also claim that Trump filed false information “under oath, in a federal court” and summoned “tens of thousands” of his followers to Washington and “sent them to march on the Capitol” with the knowledge that many were armed.
“In short, you have been at the center of any US president’s first and only effort to overturn an election and thwart the peaceful handover of power, which ultimately culminated in a bloody attack on our own Capitol and Congress itself,” they wrote. , adding that the evidence gathered by the jury “shows that you knew this activity was illegal and unconstitutional” and shows that Trump knew his fraud allegations were false.
Thompson and Cheney said the jury voted to sue the former president because of his “central role in every element” of the plan to overturn the elections, and said committee members are seeking his testimony on the communications with “more individuals” who have asserted their Fifth Amendment rights rather than testifying about conversations with him, including Roger Stone, his former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, attorneys John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark, and the GOP president Arizona’s Kelli Ward.
They added that they “do not take this action lightly,” but pointed out that Trump would not be the first former president to testify before any of the chambers of Congress under citation, and cited former presidents John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Gerald Ford as examples of former presidents who appeared before Congress after their term ended.
A schedule of documents to be produced by the November 4 deadline shows that the committee is still investigating whether Trump or his allies may have taken action to obstruct their investigation or influence witness testimony.
A specific category of documents required by the committee includes all “documents” or “communications” relating to contacts with “witnesses who have appeared or who were or should have appeared before the select committee, including witnesses who have served as White House personnel. during your administration, who served as staff for your 2020 campaign and who has served or currently serves in the United States Secret Service, “or attorneys for those witnesses.
The committee is also seeking “any communication regarding the direct or indirect payment of attorney fees for such witnesses, or seeking, offering or discussing employment for such witnesses,” as well as any communication with Tony Ornato, the agent of the US intelligence turned white The Deputy Chief of Staff of the House former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told her he told her about an altercation between Trump and the head of his protective group on the day of the riot.
The letter to the former president and the accompanying citation come just over a week after the select committee voted unanimously to force Trump to testify at the end of what is likely to be the last investigative jury hearing before the election. mid-term of November.
Speaking just before the committee members voted, Ms. Cheney said the jury was “forced to seek answers directly” from the former president, who she said had “set in motion” the events that led to the worst attack on the Capitol. of the United States since British troops set fire to it in 1814.
Mr. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who has led the jury since the House voted to establish it last year, said Trump “is required to answer” to the police officers his supporters assaulted during the riot and to “those millions of Americans whose votes he wanted to eliminate as part of his plan to stay in power.”
If Trump ultimately complies with the commission’s citation, he would be the first former president to testify before a Congressional commission since March 1983, when former President Gerald Ford appeared at a Senate Judicial Subcommittee hearing on the bicentennial of the United States Constitution.
The former president has reportedly indicated to people close to him that he may be available to appear before the panel if he is allowed to do so in a live televised hearing.
Although Trump has not publicly stated whether he will respect the investigation, he has a history of fighting tooth and nail to avoid any circumstances in which he would be forced to testify under oath, under penalty of perjury.
He also repeatedly railed against the commission’s investigation as illegitimate and derided it as a political exercise aimed at denigrating him and his supporters, most recently in a rambling four-page letter to the commission accompanied by 10 pages of false claims and complaints about the 2020 election.
