After an investigation that has lasted more than a year, the House Jan. 6 committee voted unanimously Thursday to subpoena former president Donald Trump, saying the demand for his testimony under oath was necessary to put down a marker, for history’s ledger.
There is little doubt that legal challenges and the prospect the panel will soon be disbanded makes it unlikely it will ever hear from him. But the vote spotlighted the committee’s tightening focus on the single biggest question ahead: Whether Trump should be held accountable for his role in the violent assault on the Capitol – and if so, how.
“He is required to answer for his actions,” committee chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said before the somber, 9-0 vote. “We have left no doubt – none – that Donald Trump led an effort to upend American democracy that directly resulted in the violence of Jan. 6.”
In response, Trump was defiant. “Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago?” he demanded on social media. “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.”
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At the panel’s ninth hearing this year, new texts from Secret Service agents were released and new footage was aired showing congressional leaders after they had been evacuated to a secure location, pleading for police and National Guard reinforcements to regain control of the besieged Capitol.
Overall, though, the two-and-a-half-hour session had the air of a summation of the evidence, of a closing argument in a courtroom.
The panel’s bottom line: Trump was the central thread from the start to the end of an effort to overturn the results of an election he lost. He began making plans to dispute the 2020 election as fraudulent before a single vote was counted. After Election Day, he acknowledged privately he had lost to Joe Biden but disputed that outcome publicly – and with increasing desperation.
“I don’t want people to know we lost,” Trump told his chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to testimony by Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson. “This is embarrassing.”
January 6 hearing recap: Panel subpoenas Trump, shows new video of Pelosi as mob attacked
He convened a rally on the Ellipse even though it was known law enforcement officials had been warned that some of his supporters planned to arrive armed and ready to occupy the Capitol. Indeed, he demanded to join them on the Hill, a move opposed by Secret Service officials who deemed it too dangerous.
Before the end of this year, the committee will take an even more explosive vote, on whether to recommend the unprecedented criminal prosecution of a former president. Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said the panel had “sufficient information to consider criminal referrals for multiple individuals” – that is, not only Trump but also others.
‘Central cause’ of Jan. 6 was Trump, Cheney says
The decision of whether to pursue a criminal investigation will be made not by them but by the Department of Justice. There were moments when the committee members could have been talking directly to Attorney General Merrick Garland as they sought to methodically build the case for Trump’s culpability.
“The central cause of Jan. 6 was one man, Donald Trump, who many others followed,” Cheney said. “None of this would have happened without him. He was personally and substantially involved in all of it.”
For the first time, the committee released text messages and other documents from the Secret Service, obtained since their last hearing. They showed that the Secret Service and other agencies knew 10 days before the riot that some protesters were planning violence. Committee member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the new information raised questions about previous testimony by some White House and Secret Service officials that they weren’t aware of threats to those they protect.
That would be perjury.
The hearing was held just 26 days before Election Day, the midterm contests that will determine control of Congress next year. If Republicans win a majority in the House, as most political strategists in both parties predict, the Jan. 6 committee almost certainly will be disbanded. House GOP leaders refused to appoint members to the panel, calling it a political witch hunt.
Only two renegade Republicans, Cheney and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, agreed to join it.
For many supporters, the committee has had two overarching to goals: First, to make recommendations to ensure that the violent effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power doesn’t happen again. Second, to hold accountable those responsible – not only the rioters who broke the windows and roamed the halls of the Capitol, but also those who incited them.
From tracking Trump to elevating Cheney: The Jan. 6 committee has changed the political world
In the day’s most dramatic footage, the committee showed video of congressional leaders, evacuated to Fort McNair, a nearby military post, trying desperately to stop the mob so they could return to the Capitol and complete the Electoral College count.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was shown pleading on a cellphone with the the attorney general to convince the president to call off the protesters. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged the secretary of defense and then the governor of Virginia to send help.
“It’s just horrendous,” Pelosi told then-governor Ralph Northam of Virginia as she watched the rioters on a TV set, “and all at the instigation of the president of the United States.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jan. 6 committee subpoenas Trump ‘to answer for his actions’
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