The investigative committee into the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021 has summoned ex-President Donald Trump. This is a remarkable escalation of investigations. Previously, the congressional committee tried to hold Trump more responsible for the attack with new evidence.
If Trump doesn’t obey the subpoena, the House of Representatives could report him to the Justice Department for contempt of Congress. Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon, for example, has already been convicted for this. However, time is running out. A new House of Representatives will be elected on November 8th. The committee must complete its work by the end of the year – before the newly elected House of Representatives begins its work in January. Even if Trump should follow the subpoena, he can refuse to testify.
The attack on the Capitol came right after Trump’s appearance, during which the then US President stirred up crowds of his supporters with false claims that his election victory against challenger Joe Biden had been stolen from him. “We have an obligation to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion,” Republican Rep. Liz Cheney said in the subpoena.
In a first reaction, Trump did not comment on how he wanted to proceed, but only criticized the timing of the subpoena. In a post on his in-house online network Truth Social, he asked why the committee didn’t ask him months ago to testify, but waited until the end. At the same time, he repeated his claims, which had been refuted by many courts, about “massive falsification” in the presidential election – “the reason for what happened on January 6”.
Trump supporters had violently stormed the seat of parliament that day. Congress met there to formally confirm Biden’s victory in the presidential election. Five people died as a result of the riots.
Documents from Mar-a-lago: Supreme Court does not help Trump
At the same time as the committee’s decision, Trump also has bad news from the Supreme Court. It is about the classified documents that the FBI seized at his Mar-a-lago estate. The country’s Supreme Court dismissed an urgent request from the ex-president. Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court last week that a special auditor must have access to the classified documents.
In early August, the Federal Police FBI searched Trump’s villa in the US state of Florida. The FBI confiscated various classified documents, some with the highest level of secrecy. Among the thousands of documents, according to the FBI, were a good 100 documents marked as secret. By keeping the documents in his private home after leaving office, Trump could have made himself liable to prosecution. The result was legal wrangling over the legality of the confiscation.
Trump’s team was finally able to achieve success with the appointment of a neutral examiner. However, an appeals court denied the special auditor access to the documents marked as secret. Trump’s lawyers argued in the Supreme Court that the 76-year-old had unlimited power to declassify documents while he was president. Therefore, markings alone cannot determine whether a document is still classified or whether Trump has released it. Therefore, the special investigator must be given access to intervene in cases of doubt.
In a single sentence, the judges now refused to deal with the matter – without going into more detail about the background or documenting different opinions. The ex-president may have had hopes that the court would stand by him. With three judges, Trump has helped the conservative camp to a solid majority in the most important court in the United States.