The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol voted unanimously at its public hearing Thursday to subpoena former President Donald Trump for his moves around the insurgency.
The resolution to withdraw to force Trump to testify under oath has been under scrutiny for some time.
The vote marks the boldest step yet for the bipartisan panel, which has so far issued more than a hundred subpoenas and interviewed more than 1,000 people for its investigation.
Most of those witnesses complied with the committee’s requests. But Trump is highly unlikely to willingly cooperate with the panel, which he has denounced as a politically motivated witch hunt.
“It is our legal responsibility to seek the testimony of Donald Trump,” committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. , said before the vote.
Vice President Liz Cheney’s rep. R-Wyo. , who presented the solution for Thompson to factor in the subpoena, said it was a “key task” for the committee to obtain testimony from the “central actor on Jan. 6. “
He noted that, of the thirty witnesses who invoked the Fifth Amendment law opposing self-incrimination in their testimony, several did so directly in reaction to questions about their dealings with Trump.
Those witnesses come with Republican political operative Roger Stone, former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and pro-Trump lawyer John Eastman, Cheney said.
He added that some key figures had defied the subpoenas. Among them, Steve Bannon, a former senior adviser to the Trump White House, who was found in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify.
Thompson clarified in his opening that Thursday’s presentation is technically not a hearing, but a “formal committee business meeting” so members can vote on other investigative measures.
Just before the hearing adjourned, the nine-member panel voted unanimously to order Thompson to subpoena Trump.
Trump opposed the Jan. 6 investigation in a series of statements and messages on his social media platform Truth Social later Thursday. “The committee is a general ‘BRUB’ that has only served to further divide our country,” one message read. .
The committee’s ninth public hearing Thursday afternoon the results of its investigation, interspersed with new clips and information.
The panel singled out Trump through streaming clips of his former staffers, who testified that they knew at the time that Trump had lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
The hearing also showed new clips of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. , and others calling various Trump management officials, and adding Vice President Mike Pence, to urge them to take action to quell the conflict as they hid from the crowd that invaded the Capitol.
The committee is tasked with investigating the facts and reasons for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, when a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and forced lawmakers to flee their chambers for security reasons.
Trump, who never conceded the election to Biden, falsely claims that his victory was stolen through widespread voter fraud.
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