Jan 6 committee latest news: Panel votes to subpoena Trump

Republican Congressman Andy Biggs has dismissed the panel’s vote to compel Trump to testify as a “political hatchet job” against the former president.

Biggs, a staunch Trump supporter, also called the committee “illegitimate”.

The illegitimate January 6 Committee's vote to subpoena President Trump is a political hatchet job read by a political hatchet committee.

This committee is illegitimately formed, in violation of House rules, and is organized to search and destroy perceived political enemies.

— Rep Andy Biggs (@RepAndyBiggsAZ) October 13, 2022

Democratic Congresswoman Nikema Williams has said the panel made the right decision by issuing a subpoena for Trump’s testimony, adding that the ex-president “must answer to the American people” for the Capitol riot.

As Congressman John Lewis said, “When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something, to do something.”

The January 6th Committee is right to subpoena Donald Trump. He must answer to the American people for January 6th.

— Congresswoman Nikema Williams (@RepNikema) October 13, 2022

Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee have rejected the panel’s decision to subpoena Trump.

“The country is experiencing record crime and record inflation,” House Judiciary GOP wrote on Twitter. “Sadly, Democrats can’t get over their weird OBSESSION of President Trump to do anything about it.”

The country is experiencing record crime and record inflation.

Sadly, Democrats can’t get over their weird OBSESSION of President Trump to do anything about it. https://t.co/3f6zxTCI97

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 13, 2022

US federal law says that failure to comply with a congressional subpoena for testimony or documents is a misdemeanor, punishable by one to 12 months imprisonment.

If the January 6 committee recommends a subpoena that is ignored, the full House must vote on whether to make a referral to the Department of Justice, which has the authority to decide to bring charges.

Cheney says the panel has a responsibility to hear from Trump, the central figure in the events of January 6, 2021.

“We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this in motion,” she said.

The panel voted 9-0 to approve a subpoena to compel the testimony of the former president.

The committee has voted unanimously to subpoena Trump, a move that would compel the former president to testify in front of the panel under oath.

“He is the one person at the centre of the story of what happened on January 6, so we want to hear from him,” Congressman Bennie Thompson said.

The committee has played footage of the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, making a call to then-Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen on the day of the riot asking him to urge Trump to interfere and tell his supporters to end the attack.

“Why don’t you get the president to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr Attorney General – in your law enforcement responsibility – a public statement they should all leave?” Schumer asked.

The panel has laid out how top Republicans, including the party’s leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, also blamed Trump for the Capitol riot.

“The president did not act swiftly,” McConnell told the Senate in February 2021. “He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored. No.”

The top Republican in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, also blamed the former president for failing to stop his supporters. “The president bears responsibility,” McCarthy said in Congress just days after the Capitol was breached.

The panel has played a video showing congressional leaders making calls on January 6, 2021, to US defence officials and leaders of nearby states to send law enforcement to secure the Capitol.

“They need massive personnel now,” Schumer told the US defence secretary in a call. “Could you get the Maryland National Guard to come too?”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the governor of Virginia to ask him to send security reinforcements. The “personal safety [of lawmakers] just transcends everything, but the fact is on any given day, they’re breaking the law in many different ways, and quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the president of the United States,” Pelosi said during the call.

This previously unseen footage shows Congressional leaders—both Republicans and Democrats—as they were taken to a secure location during the January riot.

Everyone involved was actively working to address the violence. All of them did what President Trump refused to do. pic.twitter.com/fcF4zBLGWm

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) October 13, 2022

Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro, reporting from Capitol Hill, has said that Trump’s legal team is “almost certain” to appeal a possible subpoena from the January 6 committee.

A subpoena would be significant, however, because Trump has never faced “aggressive” scrutiny over the events of that day, Zhou-Castro said.

If the panel does vote to subpoena the former president, as US media outlets have reported, “it is almost certain that his team will appeal this, that he will not comply with this subpoena and this will be the beginning of a long, protracted legal battle,” she said.

But the move would help the committee “refocus the nation’s conversation squarely back on Trump and his role in the January 6 insurrection”.

The committee has reasserted that Trump was pushing to join his supporters at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, despite warnings from the Secret Service, the agency tasked with the president’s security.

The panel displayed an email by Secret Service agents expressing concern about possible off-the-record movement by Trump to the Capitol on the afternoon of the riot.

Lawmakers also aired segments from the testimony of former White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany saying that she recalled Trump saying he wanted to join the march to the Capitol.

The committee has gone into a short recess.

Trump’s claims were not supported by sufficient evidence of fraud or irregularities. In fact, they were baseless, as judges repeatedly recognized.

In none of these 62 cases was Trump able to establish any viable claims of fraud sufficient to overturn the election results. pic.twitter.com/e12PT8JgkG

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) October 13, 2022

The panel has stressed that Trump was told by legal advisers that Pence could not legally overturn the election results.

Still, Trump pushed on with a “significant” campaign to pressure the vice president to change the results through his ceremonial role of counting the electoral college votes, Democratic Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy said.

The committee played a video from the testimony of former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, in which he told lawmakers, “My view was that the vice president didn’t have the legal authority to do anything except what he did.”

The January 6 committee plans to vote to subpoena Trump, US media outlets have reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Panel members had previously said they were still mulling whether to subpoena the former president and former Vice President Mike Pence, NBC News reported.

The Washington Post, citing three people with knowledge of the vote, said its sources did not say whether the committee was “seeking the former president’s direct testimony or more documents beyond those the committee has already received”.

The committee has played video segments from the testimonies of several Trump aides saying they had told the former president that the election was over, especially after the courts ruled against lawsuits alleging fraud.

Former Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia said he called Trump in mid-December 2020 to tell him that he should concede.

“I conveyed to him that I thought that it was time for him to acknowledge that President Biden had prevailed in the election,” Scalia told the committee.

On Election Night, Trump’s advisors told him that he didn’t have a factual basis to declare victory. Yet not only did Trump decide to declare victory, he also called for vote counting to stop. Stopping would have violated federal & state laws & disenfranchised millions of voters. pic.twitter.com/HucKzeUZRH

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) October 13, 2022

The January 6 panel has said that Trump, knowing he lost the election to Joe Biden, rushed to try to withdraw American forces from Somalia and Afghanistan before the end of his term.

Trump signed an order on November 11 that “would have required the immediate withdrawal of troops from Somalia and Afghanistan, all to be completed before Biden’s inauguration on January 20”, committee member Adam Kinzinger said.

In a clip then played during the hearing, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley said he did not agree with the effort.

“It is odd. It is non-standard. It is potentially dangerous. I personally thought it was militarily not feasible, nor wise,” Milley told the panel.

The panel has played video footage of Trump associate Roger Stone, outlining a plan to declare victory before the 2020 election and allege fraud if the then-president were to lose.

“I suspect [the results] will still be up in the air. When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. ‘No, we won. F**k you,'” Stone said in documentary footage from November 2020.

In another clip played during Thursday’s hearing, Stone invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked during a January 6 committee deposition if he believed the violence at the Capitol was justified.

He invoked the same right when asked during the deposition if he played any role in the attack.

Lofgren has said that Trump had a plan to dispute a potential election loss even before the votes were counted.

“This ‘Big Lie’ – President Trump’s effort to convince Americans that he had won the 2020 election – began before the election results even came in,” she said.

“It was intentional. It was premeditated. It was not based on election results or any evidence of actual fraud affecting the results or any actual problems with voting machines.”

Congresswoman Lofgren has said that Trump’s unfounded declaration of victory on Election Night was preplanned.

“The evidence shows that his false victory speech was planned well in advance, before any votes had been counted,” she said. “It was a premeditated plan by the president to declare victory no matter what the actual result was.”