Near the end of the Jan. 6 Committee’s final meeting before the midterm elections, the panel took an historic, unanimous vote on Thursday to subpoena former President Donald Trump, demanding he testify about his failed plot to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.
The subpoena marks the first time a congressional panel has directly targeted this ex-Commander-in-Chief, and it underscores how high the stakes are in the ongoing investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“He led an effort to upend American democracy that directly resulted in the violence of January 6th. He tried to take away the voice of American people. He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened… we want to hear from him,” said Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS).
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“This is a question of accountability to the American people. He is required to answer for his actions, he is required to answer for those police officers who put their lives and bodies on the line,” he added, noting that this was as “serious and extraordinary action.”
Neither Trump’s office nor his top lawyers on these matters responded to a request for comment on Thursday.
Should Trump ignore the subpoena, he faces the same threat of a criminal prosecution for “contempt of Congress” that led to a federal conviction against another MAGA ally: former senior White House adviser Stephen Bannon.
However, consequences for witnesses refusing to testify have been applied unequally. For example, even though Congress held former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt, the Department of Justice appears uninterested in actually pursuing charges over the House vote. Trump ignoring a subpoena could result in charges, but it also could result in nothing.
For months, the committee has publicly presented evidence that Trump engaged in frivolous lawsuits to overturn the election, intimidated state officials to erase Joe Biden’s lead in the 2020 election, ignored evidence that he lost fairly, and knew his loyal mob in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021 was armed and seething when he sent them to march on the Capitol building where they attacked Congress. But throughout the panel’s nine public hearings, one voice has been conspicuously silent: Trump himself.
The closest the panel has come was when it played outtakes from Trump’s video addresses during and after the attack on the Capitol, revealing a president who simply refused to concede and still wanted to rile up his enraged followers.
The decision to subpoena the former president—who will likely ignore it—is an aggressive tactic that could go two very different ways. If the president refuses to show up and the full Congress refers the matter to the Department of Justice, prosecutors could refuse to take up the case and embolden resistant witnesses. Otherwise, Trump faces a prosecution similar to the year-long case that will end next week when a federal judge sentences Bannon.
Thursday’s subpoena came from one of the few Republicans who is furthest removed from the party’s loyalty to Trump’s MAGA movement: Co-Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY).
“We must seek the testimony—under oath—of January 6th’s central player,” she said. “At some point the Department of Justice may well unearth facts these witnesses are concealing. But our duty today is to our country, to our children, and to our Constitution. We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set these events in motion.”
Congress has previously demanded testimony from ex-presidents, but only in rare circumstances. For example, in 1846, Congress subpoenaed former presidents John Tyler and John Quincy Adams. They complied by either testifying in person or providing a deposition.
