News

Jan. 6 panel subpoenas Trump

By: NPR Washington Desk
Posted on: Friday, October 21, 2022

WASHINGTON, D.C. (NPR) — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has subpoenaed former President Donald Trump for testimony under oath and for records, the panel said in a statement. The subpoena requires Trump to produce the documents by Nov. 4 and to appear for testimony on or about Nov. 14.

A video of former President Donald Trump speaking during a rally near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, is shown at a June 9 hearing before the House Jan. 6 committee. [Andrew Harnik | AP]

The move comes weeks after the panel voted unanimously to subpoena Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot.

“As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the panel’s chair, and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., its vice chair, said in a letter to Trump.

The letter underscored a key theme of the Jan. 6 hearings: that Trump tried to overturn the election though his claims of fraud were false, rejected by the courts, and refuted by his own advisers.

“In short, you were at the center of the first and only effort by any U.S. President to overturn an election and obstruct the peaceful transition of power, ultimately culminating in a bloody attack on our own Capitol and on the Congress itself,” they wrote.

After the panel voted Oct. 13 to subpoena him, Trump in a statement on his Truth Social called the committee “a total bust.”

“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’ that has only served to further divide our Country which, by the way, is doing very badly – A laughing stock all over the World?” he wrote.