January 6 Committee Votes To Subpoena Donald Trump
The bipartisan House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, unanimously voted Thursday to subpoena former president Donald Trump. The move marked the culmination of the committee’s year-and-a-half-long investigation.
“He is required to answer,” chairman Bennie Thompson said of the former president, adding that subpoeaning a former president is a “serious and extraordinary action”.
At the start of the hearing, members of the January 6 committee made their strongest indication yet pointing towards the likelihood of sending a criminal referral to the Justice Department urging the agency to prosecute Mr Trump for specific crimes at the outset of their meeting Thursday.
Committee chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, noted that the agenda of Thursday’s meeting left open the opportunity for lawmakers to take votes on actions responding to the testimony that their panel had uncovered thus far.
“There’s one more difference about today. Pursuant to the notice circulated prior to today’s proceedings, we are convened today, not as a hearing, but as a formal committee business meeting. So that in addition to presenting evidence, we can potentially hold a committee vote on further investigative action based upon that evidence,” said Mr Thompson.
Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, offered the resolution that the committee direct the chairman to issue the subpoena to Trump for documents and testimony in connection with the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol building.
“Our duty today is to our country, and our children, and our Constitution,” she said. “We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion. And we are entitled to the answers today, so we can act now to protect our republic.”
House investigators held eight public hearings through the summer, with Thursday’s proceeding, their ninth, likely to be its last. Cheney said during opening remarks that the focus of the meeting is Trump’s “state of mind, his intent, his motivations, and how he spurred others to do his bidding.”
“The vast weight of evidence presented so far has shown us that the central cause of Jan. 6 was one man, Donald Trump, who many others followed,” she said. “None of this would have happened without him. He was personally and substantially involved in all of it.”
In her final remarks before the vote on the subpoena to Trump, Cheney said the committee has “sufficient information” to answer questions about the Jan. 6 assault, as well as “sufficient information” to consider criminal referrals to several people.
“But,” she said, “a key task remains: We must seek the testimony under oath of January 6th’s central player.”
As the committee held its meeting Thursday, the Supreme Court declined a request from Trump for it to intervene in a dispute over documents he brought with him from the White House to his South Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, at the end of his presidency in Jan. 2021. There were no noted dissents.
