January 6 committee votes to subpoena Donald Trump

The congressional committee investigating last year’s attack on the US Capitol has voted unanimously to issue a subpoena to former president Donald Trump, whom members have accused of being responsible for the violence that day.

Speaking at the end of the committee’s ninth live televised hearing, the Democratic chair Bennie Thompson, said: “He is the one person at the centre of the story of what happened on January 6, so we want to hear from him.”

Liz Cheney, the Republican deputy chair, said: “We must seek the testimony under oath of the January 6 central player.”

The vote is only the seventh time in history Congress has issued a subpoena to a sitting or former president, according to legal historians, and sets up what is likely to be a high-stakes legal battle.

Several of those closest to Trump have already refused to comply with subpoenas to testify in front of the committee, and two of them — Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro — have been prosecuted as a result. Bannon is due to be sentenced for contempt of Congress later this month.

The former president could choose to attend a hearing and refuse to answer questions, as some of his supporters have done.

Some legal experts believe Trump will launch a legal challenge that could tie up Congress until after the midterm elections in November. But others believe there is still time before this Congress ends early next year to issue the subpoena and refer the former president to the justice department if he refuses to comply.

Norman Eisen, who advised the committee that handled Trump’s first impeachment, said: “I think this was the right thing to do. [Trump] could try and litigate this, but he cannot stop members making a referral to the DoJ for contempt of Congress.”

The vote came after another dramatic televised hearing on the January 6 attack on the Capitol, during which the committee presented fresh evidence that Trump believed he had lost the election, yet pressed ahead with his attempt to overturn the result.

Several video clips were played during the hearing showing close aides to the former president admitting his electoral defeat. Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said during his testimony that Trump had said during one policy debate after the election: “We lost, we need to let that issue go to the next guy.”

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s final chief of staff Mark Meadows, said she had heard Trump say: “I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark, this is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out.”

Trump’s honest opinion as to whether he lost the election or not could prove crucial to any future prosecution relating to the attacks. Cheney said during Thursday’s hearing that members “may ultimately decide to make a series of criminal referrals to the Department of Justice”.

The panel has laid out in a series of nine hearings how Trump and some of those around him played a central role in fomenting the violence of that day in an effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Zoe Lofgren, one of the Democratic members of the committee, showed new evidence suggesting that Trump was preparing to declare victory in any contested election long before voting began.

This included a draft speech written at the end of October in which Trump planned to announce himself the winner of the election based on “the ballots counted by the election day deadline”. Many postal ballots, which tended to favour his opponent Joe Biden, were counted after this point.

The committee also showed video footage of Roger Stone, a political strategist and close supporter of Trump, talking to members of the far-right groups The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers before election day.

In one piece of footage, Stone said: “I suspect [the election result] will still be up in the air. When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. We won. Fuck you. Sorry, over. We won.”

In another clip he said: “Fuck the voting, let’s go right to the violence.”

The committee’s eight sessions broadcast during the summer have already helped bring the former president to the forefront of the election campaign, which in turn has handed momentum to the Democrats.

Members hope Thursday’s hearing will further damage Trump’s reputation — at least among Democrats and independent voters — by showing how he ignored warnings about the violence his supporters were about to unleash.

So far the hearings have resonated with the public, polls suggest. Since they began in June, Trump’s approval rating has dropped two percentage points to 42 per cent, while the Democrats have gained two points in the polls to 45 per cent.

They have also added to the series of legal challenges the former president is facing, including an investigation by US authorities into whether he mishandled sensitive and classified information after leaving office.

Trump suffered a setback in that probe on Thursday when the Supreme Court denied his request to allow a court appointee to review all of the documents seized earlier this year from his Florida estate. Instead the so-called special master will be barred from accessing about 100 classified documents, and federal agents will be allowed to continue working on their case while he does so.

A lawyer for the former president did not respond to a request for comment.