Panel issues stark warning to Americans
Jan 6 committee subpoenas Trump in major escalation of investigation
The House January 6 committee took the extraordinary action of subpoenaing former US President Donald Trump yesterday as it issued a stark warning in its final public hearing before the midterm election: The future of the nation’s democracy is at stake.
The panel’s October hearing, just weeks ahead of the midterm election, focused on Trump’s state of mind on January 6, 2021, as he egged on his supporters with false claims of election fraud, pushed to accompany them to the Capitol while lawmakers were counting the votes, and then stood by for hours as the mob violently breached the building.
The committee was set to shut down at the beginning of next year, and was making its final public arguments ahead of a report expected in December.
“We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion,” said Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, the panel’s vicechairwoman and one of two Republicans on the nine-member committee. “And every American is entitled to those answers. So we can act now to protect our republic.”
The subpoena for Trump is a major escalation in the probe. After signalling for months that they may leave the former president alone, the unanimous 9-0 vote “for relevant documents and testimony, under oath” was definitive.
The committee had long debated whether to seek evidence from or subpoena Trump or former VicePresident Mike Pence. Neither has spoken directly to the committee.
While Trump has been hostile to the probe both in court and in public, Pence’s lawyers had engaged with the panel for several months with no clear resolution.
Pence could still be called or subpoenaed. But several of his closest aides have complied with the investigation, with several of them providing great detail about his movements and state of mind as he resisted Trump’s pleas to object to the certification of electoral votes that day and try to overturn their defeat.
In contrast, the committee showed several clips of Trump allies refusing to answer questions before the panel.
New video aired by the panel showed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reacting emotionally to the news that her colleagues were donning gas masks in the House chamber as rioters neared the building.
She quickly went to work trying to secure and reopen the Capitol.
Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer were seen in unidentified secure locations and talking to security officials.
The footage included a conversation between Pelosi and Pence, who was also in a secure location, discussing their return to the session to finish certifying Biden’s victory.
The two leaders are seen working to bring the National Guard to the Capitol amid an hours-long delay.
At one point, Schumer said he was going to “call up the ’effing secretary of DOD,” referring to the Defence Department.
The lesson of the committee’s investigation is that institutions only hold when people of good faith protect them without regard to political cost, Cheney said during the hearing.
“Why would Americans assume that our Constitution and our institutions in our Republic are invulnerable to another attack? Why would we assume that those institutions will not falter next time?” Cheney asked.
The warnings come as Trump was still refusing to acknowledge that he lost his re-election to Joe Biden and was considering another run in 2024 — and as many Republicans who deny Biden’s win are running in the midterm elections at all levels of government. Many states have replaced election officials who resisted Trump’s pressure campaign.
“Any future president inclined to attempt what Donald Trump did in 2020 has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way,” said Cheney, who lost her own Republican primary this August.
“Consider whether we can survive for another 246 years.”
The committee has obtained more than 1.5 million pages of documents from the Secret Service in recent weeks. They revealed some of that information in the hearing, including an email from within the agency on December 11, 2020, the day the Supreme Court rejected one of Trump’s attempts to undermine the vote.
“Just FYI. POTUS is p **** d — breaking news — Supreme Court denied his law suit. He is livid now,” one anonymous Secret Service email said.
Multiple emails showed that the agency had ample warnings of violence in the weeks and days ahead of the insurrection.
An alert received by the agency on December 24 said multiple online users were targeting members of Congress and “instructing others to march into the chambers”, said Adam Schiff, a Democratic member of the panel.
The agency has not turned over text messages it said were deleted. The committee has said in the past that some witnesses were intimidated against speaking.
Cheney addressed one of the committee’s remaining questions at the beginning of the meeting, saying the panel “may ultimately decide to make a series of criminal referrals to the Department of Justice”.
At the end of the hearing, she mentioned the possibility again, saying it has “sufficient information to consider criminal referrals for multiple individuals”.
Members of the committee have long suggested they may suggest charges for Trump or others based on their own evidence. While such a referral would not force any action, it would place political pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland as the department has pursued its own investigations.