Trump Subpoena Issued, Setting Up Showdown With Jan. 6 Panel

(Bloomberg) -- The House committee investigating last year’s attack on the Capitol issued a subpoena to Donald Trump, demanding the former president account for his actions under oath and initiating a legal showdown that could test the persistence of presidential prerogatives after leaving office.

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The subpoena, approved by the panel Oct. 13, underscores the committee members’ portrait of Trump as the key instigator in the assault on the Capitol just weeks ahead of congressional elections in which many Republican candidates have embraced Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential contest.

“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-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power,” committee Chair Bennie Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney wrote in a letter to Trump accompanying the subpoena.

Link to letter, documents request and subpoena

The panel wants to initially interview Trump beginning Nov. 14 or soon afterward, according to the letter. The deposition would be under oath and led by the committee’s professional staff, which includes former federal prosecutors, and members of the panel. The subpoena directs Trump to provide documents by Nov. 4.

David Warrington, an attorney for Trump, said in a statement that the former president’s legal team “will review and analyze” the subpoena and “respond as appropriate to this unprecedented action.”

If Trump doesn’t comply with the subpoena, the House can vote on whether to make a criminal referral to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who can choose whether or not to pursue charges. The Justice Department is already investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents seized from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence, while state authorities in Georgia and New York pursue other investigations of Trump and his associates.

The committee also is demanding extensive records of Trump’s communications during the election fight, including all communications the former president had or directed with members of Congress and the Justice Department on efforts to overturn the 2020 election and with state officials to delay certification of election returns. It specifically includes communications through secure encrypted apps such as Signal.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment specifically about the Trump subpoena.

President Joe Biden believes “it is important to get to the bottom of what happened on Jan. 6. It was a very dark day in our nation. It was an attack on our democracy,” she said.

The subpoena specifically seeks records and communications related to Trump’s involvement in efforts to field alternative sets of electors in disputed states and attempts to influence Vice President Mike Pence to use his role in the Jan. 6 electoral vote count to try to overturn the results.

And the panel is also seeking records of any communication as far back as Sept. 1, 2020, with the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers or similar militia groups tied to violence at the Capitol. The panel also wants records of communications with key Trump lieutenants in the effort to overturn the election, including Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and Rudy Giuliani. Bannon on Friday was sentenced to four months in jail for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee.

Trump posted a 14-page response after the committee vote on the subpoena that didn’t address whether he would comply. Instead, he repeated falsehoods about the 2020 election.

If Trump challenges the subpoena in court, or if the committee sues to enforce it, the legal fight could take years by raising largely untested questions about immunity for presidents in and out of office. The US Justice Department brought contempt charges against two witnesses who defied Jan. 6 subpoenas, but chose to not prosecute others, so Trump also could take his chances by simply not showing up.

Any subpoena issued by the committee will expire at the end of the congressional term. If Republicans take control of the House in the midterm elections next month, GOP leaders are expected to end the committee’s work, likely making any subpoena fight moot.

Thompson and Cheney noted in their letter that Presidents John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford each testified before Congress after they left office. Roosevelt said during his congressional testimony, “an ex-president is merely a citizen of the United States.”

But the only former president to be subpoenaed to testify before a congressional committee in modern times was Truman, who was ordered to appear before the House Un-American Activities in 1953. Truman refused to comply and the committee didn’t try to enforce the subpoena. He later testified voluntarily before congressional panels on other matters.

--With assistance from Mark Niquette, Jenny Leonard and Billy House.

(Updates with attorney’s response in fifth paragraph)

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