Members of the House Select Committee vote unanimously to subpoena former U.S. President Donald Trump during a hearing in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington on Oct. 13.Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The Jan. 6 committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump, setting the stage for a potential legal battle with the former president as the most wide-ranging investigation into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election reaches its crescendo.
The congressional panel voted unanimously at its likely final public hearing Thursday to require Mr. Trump to sit for an interview under oath and turn over documentation related to the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“The central cause of Jan. 6 was one man: Donald Trump,” said Republican Congresswoman and committee vice-chair Liz Cheney, who moved the motion to compel Mr. Trump’s testimony. “None of this would have happened without him. He was personally and substantially involved in all of it.”
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The move capped a dramatic hearing, which featured new evidence that the White House knew ahead of time that armed protesters were planning to target the Capitol and that Mr. Trump privately admitted he had lost the election. The committee also released previously unseen video of legislative leaders co-ordinating a police response to the riot amid inaction from Mr. Trump.
The ex-president did not immediately say whether he would comply with the subpoena.
“Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago? Why did they wait until the very end, the final moments of their last meeting? Because the committee is a total ‘BUST,’” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
If Mr. Trump refuses to co-operate, the committee could ask the Department of Justice to charge him with contempt of Congress. Two former White House aides, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, have previously been charged for not complying with the panel’s demands for testimony. Mr. Bannon was convicted in July, while Mr. Navarro is still awaiting trial.
Mr. Trump is already fighting the Justice Department in court over a separate investigation into his taking of classified documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate.
Another potential route would be for Mr. Trump to sit for a Jan. 6 deposition, but not answer any questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. He used this tactic during a state-level probe of his business dealings in New York in August.
Since July, the committee has outlined a concerted effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to put pressure on officials in state governments and the Justice Department to throw out Joe Biden’s election victory, culminating in the riot. The panel is expected to release a final report by the end of the year, and may press the Justice Department to lay criminal charges based on its findings.
In Thursday’s hearing, legislators revealed e-mails and group chats that suggested White House security officials knew ahead of the riot about the potential for violence.
The messages between Secret Service agents included intelligence that showed some of Mr. Trump’s supporters had a plan to “march into DC armed,” before “invading the Capitol building.” One tip from the FBI to the Secret Service about the Proud Boys, a far-right group, warned: “Their plan is to literally kill people.”
Other Secret Service messages from the morning of Jan. 6 showed agents discussing the presence of rifles and pistols in the crowd at Mr. Trump’s rally near the White House. But Mr. Trump nonetheless urged the assembled to march on the Capitol.
Videos played at the hearing showed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic and Republican leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, and then-vice president Mike Pence calling in police and military reinforcements as they hid from rioters. “We have some senators who are still in their hideaways. They need massive personnel now,” Mr. Schumer told the Pentagon.
Another video showed staff in the office of House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, a staunch Trump ally, fleeing down a hallway to escape the mob.
The committee also presented evidence that Mr. Trump knew he had lost the election, even as he continued to baselessly claim Mr. Biden’s victory was fraudulent.
The week after the Nov. 3, 2020, vote, recounted former White House aide Alyssa Farah, she walked into the Oval Office to find Mr. Trump watching Mr. Biden on television. “Can you believe that I lost to this effing guy?” Ms. Farah recalled Mr. Trump saying.
In mid-December, 2020, after the Supreme Court refused to hear one of Mr. Trump’s election challenges, he raged at his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said Cassidy Hutchinson, Mr. Meadows’s assistant. “I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing,” Mr. Trump said, according to Ms. Hutchinson. “Figure it out.”
Adrian Morrow