The Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol issued a subpoena to former President Donald Trump on Friday demanding that he testify before investigators about his involvement in events leading up to the insurrection.
During the committee’s last public hearing, the panel voted unanimously to issue the subpoena, a fitting and largely expected end to more than a year of rigorous investigation into Jan. 6 that featured interviews from at least 1,000 witnesses. It has been widely reported that panel members spent the last two weeks carefully parsing out the subpoena details while weighing how they might actually be able to enforce this historic request on a truncated timeline.
RELATED STORY: Recap: The final hearing of the Jan. 6 probe was a bonanza of bad news for Trump
Trump Subpoena by Daily Kos on Scribd
True to form, Trump’s response to the subpoena before it was issued was a melange of long-debunked conspiracy theory about voter fraud in the 2020 election and rage-filled critique of the committee’s legitimacy. All of this was offered without any firm commitment to comply but The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as a number of other news outlets, reported that Trump told close advisers he wanted to testify before the panel live. On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that members of Trump’s legal team have advised against a live appearance. The odds that Trump would risk perjuring himself, with his penchant for lying and confusing non-sequitor, are high.
Allies of Trump have painted the subpoena as yet more political persecution but according to the committee, whether its subpoena is fruitful or not, it is a point of principle to “seek answers directly from the man who set all of this in motion,” vicechair Liz Cheney said at the committee’s last public hearing.
In its multi-page letter notifying Trump of the subpoena, the committee gave Trump until Nov. 4 to start producing the materials requested by investigators and ordered that he appear for deposition on Nov. 14 or close it.
The deposition would be under oath, led by former federal prosecutors who work on the committee (as it has been for every other witness) and he would likely be asked to testify for a number of days, according to the panel’s letter issued Friday.
Any “relevant privilege issues” that Trump might wish to raise must be put into a privilege log, or, a list of documents he deems privileged. This is also standard legal fare but anticipating Trump’s ubiquitous position that he is above oversight of any kind, the committee offered him a reminder.
“We recognize the Supreme Court has ruled that former Presidents retain the limited ability to assert executive privilege. But any such privilege is qualified and as the D.C. Circuit explained in the case involving a request for your official presidential records, the Select Committee has a ‘uniquely compelling need’ for the requested information, “ the notice states.
The committee has demanded that Trump provide records for the following: all communications sent through the encrypted messaging app Signal that were either placed by him, received by him, or ordered sent by him on January 6. Trump must also produce records of telephone calls meeting the same criteria from Jan. 6.
Calls, texts, and emails sent through Signal to any member of Congress from Dec. 18, 2021, to Jan. 6, 2021, have been demanded.
Dec. 18 was the date of the "unhinged" Oval Office meeting with Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. It was during this meeting that the group spoke of issuing an executive order to have the military seize voting machines in battleground states that Trump lost.
Notably, Trump tweeted a clarion call on Dec. 19, 2021, for his supporters to descend on Washington.
Conversations about delays to the counting of the electoral slates or attempts to “encourage” state legislators and state officials from Sept. 1, 2020, to Jan. 20, 2021, are demanded in the sprawling subpoena. Records of discussions between Trump and electors who pledged themself to him and met to certify their slates for him before President Joe Biden was certified as a given state’s winner are included.
Any photos or video in his possession that were taken on Jan. 6 that make any reference at all to the rally on the Ellipse, the joint session of Congress, or the riot at the Capitol are requested too.
Records of calls, texts, or other communications made over Signal from Nov. 3 to Jan 5 that reference the election or the joint session of Congress require congressional scrutiny.
The same goes for any handwritten notes, summaries, readouts, and memos spanning Nov. 3, 2020, the day of the election, through Jan. 6.
This includes and is not limited to “any information about your possible travel to the Capitol that day.”
During the select committee’s hearings this year, Cassidy Hutchinson, a onetime aide to ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified that Trump was intent on being taken to the Capitol on Jan. 6 during the joint session. When he was denied by his driver, she said, he spun out into a fit of rage. The president’s schedule did not include a trip to the Capitol that day and by the time he was in his vehicle after his speech at the Ellipse, Hutchinson said Trump already knew that many in the crowd were armed.
Hutchinson testified under oath that Trump was unworried about those developments and wanted to have as many people as possible flow into the Ellipse for his remarks. Notably, when Trump issued his14-page diatribe slamming the subpoena, he included several pictures of his supporters surrounding the Washington Monument. Lacking in his attachments were any pictures of the mob he incited assaulting hundreds of police officers or causing more than $2 million in damages to the Capitol building.
The committee also wants Trump to produce records of his communications that began in September 2020 that involve, in any way, members of extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and other militia groups.
“Or anyone who assembled in Washington D.C on Jan. 6, 2021,” for his speech, the joint session, or for purposes related to the election.
Hitting on every element of its investigation, the committee subpoena requires Trump to produce records tied to his communications with the Justice Department, too.
Trump, committee witnesses testified this summer, attempted to capture the department by installing crony and 2020 election denier Jeffrey Clark as attorney general. Only the threat of a massive wave of resignations put him off the decision, witnesses like former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue, and Richard Engel, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel, testified.
Any record where Trump discussed former Vice President Mike Pence in the context of Jan. 6 must be turned over, according to the committee. And the panel is also interested in learning more about Trump’s chats with Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican who introduced Jeffrey Clark to the former president.
Records of conversations tied to Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Cheseboro, Boris Epshteyn, Christina Bobb, Cleta Mitchell or Patrick Byrne made the list too.
All have either represented Trump legally or advised him on strategies to delay the election certification and/or install fake electors.
Some of the requests extend beyond Jan. 6.
Any documents sent through Signal related to or even inferring possible lawsuits he intended to file to delay the joint session are demanded all the way up to the present day.
There are also still lingering questions about Trump’s possible witness tampering as the committee conducted its probe. In July, the committee revealed that one of its witnesses received a phone call from Trump but did not answer. The witnesses’ lawyer and the Justice Department were alerted.
Communications tied to his fundraising efforts and any Signal messages where there was talk of destroying records must be produced.
And, lastly, any burner phones or untraceable devices Trump might have used while in the White House, Congress wants too.
The subpoena sets in motion what is expected to be yet another fraught legal battle for Trump. To deal with the panel, he’s hired attorneys from Dhillon Law Group, a firm that has represented numerous witnesses to the select committee, according to Politico and The New York Times.
If Trump decides to ignore the subpoena, his fate could end up similar to those other White House figures who also flatly rejected Congress. Under the Democratic supermajority, the House of Representatives successfully voted four times to hold Trump officials in contempt of Congress including Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Dan Scavino and Mark Meadows. Only Bannon, who served as Trump’s adviser in 2017 for a short period, and Navarro, were charged. Bannon was found guilty earlier this year and on Friday, Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison. Neither Meadows nor Scavino, Trump’s onetime aide were charged. Meadows ultimately handed over thousands of text messages and other records to the probe and his partial cooperation may have precluded action by the DOJ. The department did not provide a reason for its decision.
At its last hearing, the committee suggested that it may call certain witnesses back for additional interviews, including Scavino.
Peter Navarro, Trump’s former trade adviser who was involved with perpetuating the Big Lie about the 2020 election, goes on trial next month.
Questions now swirl over the enforceability of the subpoena. There is a stark lack of precedent involving congressional power over records belonging to a former president about the time he was an active president.
Four presidents, featuring a mix of sitting and former, have been subpoenaed by Congress before.
Former President Richard Nixon was subpoenaed by Congress. Twice. Both were in connection to the Watergate break-in. He ended up handing some requested documents over to the House Judiciary Committee
But before that, President John Quincy Adams and President John Tyler were subpoenaed too. Tyler complied and Adams filed a written deposition, according to a report on congressional contempt power and the body’s history of enforcement of subpoenas.
In 1953, President Harry Truman, was subpoenaed by Congress but defied the request from the Committee on Un-American Activities. He rebuffed the subpoena, he said, because of his immunity as president.
“In spite of my personal willingness to cooperate with your committee, I feel constrained by my duty to the people of the United States to decline to comply with the subpoena,” Truman said.
He would later change course, however, and testify several times to Congress after he left the White House.