Robin Vos and the House Jan. 6 select committee is battling in court over a subpoena for the Assembly speaker's testimony

MADISON - A U.S. House committee investigating an attack on the U.S. Capitol is pushing back against an effort by Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to avoid testifying about his conversations with former President Donald Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Vos was subpoenaed by the committee in September for his testimony after two weeks of failed negotiations between the committee and the Rochester Republican for his voluntary participation, according to recent federal court filings.

Now, Vos is asking a federal judge to throw out the committee's subpoena — a request the committee argued should be outweighed by public interest.

"It is difficult to imagine a Congressional investigation of greater national and constitutional significance," attorneys in the U.S. House's Office of General Counsel wrote in a new filing in the matter.

Both parties are scheduled to meet in federal court later this month before U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper of the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

The legal battle takes place the same week the committee unanimously voted to subpoena Trump during a hearing where they presented evidence showing the former president incited the assault on the U.S. Capitol while knowing he had lost the 2020 election.

In the months following the attack, Trump has issued a series of public demands and private requests to Vos to take steps to overturn his loss, even campaigning for a longshot primary challenger that the longest-serving Assembly speaker only narrowly defeated.

At the heart of Trump's pressure is the idea of decertifying the 2020 presidential election, a move that is legally impossible but one a significant portion of Wisconsin's Republican base of voters has pushed Vos to take. Vos has repeatedly rejected the idea, further enraging his party's most motivated voters.

Vos argues that a recent discussion with Trump is not within the scope of the committee. The committee argues Vos' discussions are key to understanding Trump's effort to "undermine the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election."

"The Committee is to investigate the events of January 6th, the events that led up to and caused January 6th, and the impact of those events on the peaceful transfer of power in January 2021," Vos' attorneys wrote. "The requested testimony, in contrast, is solely about a request Speaker Vos allegedly received in July 2022 pertaining to proposed legislative action in the wake of a July 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision."

Vos has talked about his conversations with Trump to news reporters, prompting the committee's interest, according to the filings. His hiring and firing of former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to review the 2020 election also were used as a basis for the subpoena, according to the court filings.

"These conversations are not the only examples of Speaker Vos’s entanglement in President Trump’s campaign to decertify the 2020 Presidential election results," the committee's attorneys wrote.

"In June 2021, reportedly under pressure from the former President, Speaker Vos hired a former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice to 'audit' the state’s 2020 election results. The subsequent 14-month investigation turned up no significant evidence of fraud, cost the state over $1 million, and concluded when Speaker Vos fired the man he had put in its charge, calling him 'an embarrassment to the state.'"

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The committee sought Vos' testimony after Trump made a phone call to Vos in July after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the use of unmanned absentee ballot drop boxes were illegal.

The ruling governs future elections, however, and does not invalidate votes cast via drop boxes as Trump contends. Drop boxes have been used in Wisconsin for years, including in 2016 when Trump carried the state.

"So what’s Speaker Robin Vos doing on the Great Wisconsin Supreme Court Ruling declaring hundreds of thousands of Drop Box votes to be illegal? This is not a time for him to hide, but a time to act!" Trump said in a statement blasted July 19 to millions of followers after his phone call to Vos.

In an interview with WISN-TV, Vos described the call as another push from Trump to persuade Vos to declare President Joe Biden did not actually win Wisconsin in 2020.

"It's very consistent," Vos said. "He makes his case, which I respect. He would like us to do something different in Wisconsin. I explained it's not allowed under the constitution. He has a different opinion, and then he put out the tweet."

Vos argued in his lawsuit that the subpoena "imposes an undue burden" and violates Vos' "legislative immunity from civil process." He also argued details of such communication are protected by the U.S. Constitution.

You can find out who your legislators are and how to contact them here.

Contact Molly Beck at molly.beck@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MollyBeck.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Robin Vos, House Jan. 6 committee battling in court over subpoena