Capitol attack committee issues new subpoenas to two ex-Trump aides
The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Friday issued new subpoenas against two Trump White House officials involved in organizing the rally and march that descended into the 6 January insurrection, as they inquire into the extent of Donald Trump’s involvement.
The select committee issued orders compelling documents and testimony to Brian Jack, Trump’s former White House director of political affairs, now working for the House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, and Max Miller, a former deputy manager for the Trump campaign.
Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, said in the subpoena letter for Miller that the panel targeted him because he attended a 4 January meeting with Trump in a private White House dining room about who should speak at the rally on the morning of 6 January.
Miller also communicated with the then deputy secretary of the interior and the then-acting director of the National Park Service to strong-arm career officials, who had declined to allow the rally to take place on the Ellipse, to reverse course, Thompson said.
Thompson said the panel was pursuing Jack because he contacted a number of Republican members of Congress, including Mo Brooks, on behalf of Trump to ask them to speak at the rally in support of the former president and endorse lies about election fraud.
“Rep Mo Brooks accepted President Trump’s invitation,” Thompson said in Jack’s subpoena letter. “Brooks later told a reporter he was wearing body armor during his speech because he was warned on Monday [January 3rd] there might be risks associated with the next few days.”
The new subpoenas suggest the investigation is edging closer to establishing the role played by Trump in the planning process of the rally on the Ellipse in the days before the morning of 6 January, when he addressed supporters who would later storm the Capitol.
The select committee was already certain of at least some coordination between the Trump White House and the organizers of the rally, as the US Secret Service would have needed to sign off on how Trump would appear at the rally, according to a source familiar with the matter.
But the new subpoenas are certain to ramp up the pressure on Trump as the select committee expands its dragnet to include even more of his former aides, but also for McCarthy, who now has one of his own staffers under investigation in an inquiry he cannot control.
The select committee has so far held off issuing subpoenas to Republican members of Congress and their staff, but the subpoena to Jack raises the specter of him having to testify under oath about what he might have
learned about McCarthy’s conduct on 5 and 6 January.
McCarthy is expected to be of interest to House investigators scrutinizing what Trump was saying and doing as his supporters attacked the Capitol in order to stop Joe Biden’s certification, since he spoke directly to the former president as the riot unfolded.
The House minority leader made a frantic phone call to Trump begging him to call off the rioters as they breached the Capitol, but Trump declined, scolding him that they cared more about overturning the 2020 election than Republicans in Congress.
McCarthy, in his desperation, also spoke with senior White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to try to stop the attack after his pleas to Trump went unheeded, a former administration source said.
The subpoena to Miller, meanwhile, may adversely affect his Trump-endorsed campaign to represent Ohio’s 13th congressional district, which leans Democratic and is expected to be a swing seat in the 2022 midterm elections. The select committee on Friday also issued four additional subpoenas to pro-Trump individuals connected to the rally: Kimberly Fletcher, the president of Moms for Trump, a rally participant, as well as Brian Lewis, Ed Martin, and Bobby Peede.
The total of six subpoenas were issued by House investigators a day after the select committee held a marathon day of depositions with previously subpoenaed Trump officials, and won a major victory in court that paves the way for them to obtain Trump White House records.
House investigators on Thursday deposed Trump lawyer John Eastman, who the Guardian reported led a team of operatives at the Willard hotel to stop Biden’s certification, former defense department aide Kash Patel, former US cyber chief Christopher Krebs and Ali Alexander.
The select committee also prevailed in a US federal appellate court decision handed down on Thursday that upheld that the panel should get Trump White House records from the National Archives over the objections of executive privilege advanced by the former president.