Several new subpoenas issued by the House Select Committee on January 6 this week indicate that the panel is concentrating on former President Donald Trump’s alleged plot to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election results for President-elect Joe Biden.
The Hill reported that the committee issued 16 additional subpoenas on Tuesday, all for former Trump administration officials as well as senior campaign advisers and aides. In addition, the panel subpoenaed John Eastman, a law professor who wrote memos outlining a half-dozen measures that he believed then-Vice President Mike Pence could take in order to discount election results from contested states and declare Trump the victor.
“The latest subpoenas on Tuesday included demands for testimony from former White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, personnel director John McEntee and deputy chief of staff Christopher Liddell,” the outlet reported.
The Hill noted Tuesday that Eastman’s memos “became a blueprint for the Trump team in eyeing Congress and the states as avenues for unwinding the election,” while noting further that the Jan. 6 panel appears to believe those actions led to the violence at the U.S. Capitol Building.
Some of the other notable figures issued subpoenas this week including retired Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who briefly served as Trump’s first national security adviser and who critics say was targeted by the outgoing Obama administration; Flynn served for two years as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama and was reportedly fired over major disagreements with his administration regarding the Iran deal and alleged politicization of intelligence.
“The riots surrounded an insurrection and the insurrection surrounded a coup, and we are going to investigate every level of activity,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a Jan. 6 panel member, told The Hill Tuesday in explaining the rationale behind the latest set of subpoenas.
“A lot of these subpoenas relate to the core level of support for an attack on democracy and the red-hot center of the activity which was the political coup orchestrated against the vice president,” he added.
“We’re analyzing not just where the violence came from but where the strategy for overthrowing the presidential election came from,” said the Democratic House member who led the second impeachment trial against Trump in January following the Capitol breach.
The committee also subpoenaed former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was also an associate of Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Kerik’s firm billed the Trump campaign around $65,000 for several rooms at the Willard Hotel where he, Eastman, and others including Steve Bannon, Trump’s former top adviser, met to lay out details of the disruption plan, according to The Hill.
Separately, a federal judge on Tuesday blocked an effort by Trump to bar the Jan. 6 committee from accessing White House documents under a claim of executive privilege, Fox News reported.
Last month, Trump filed a lawsuit arguing that the materials being sought by the committee should be shielded by executive privilege claims. Lawyers for the former president filed an emergency motion late Monday asking U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, an Obama appointee, to issue a stay against releasing the materials to the committee pending an appeal, but she deemed the request “premature.”
The committee is seeking telephone records, visitor logs, and other documents that are currently being held by the National Archives. Currently, National Archives and Records Administration is slated to turn over those materials on Friday.
Trump attorney Jesse Binnall argued in the Monday motion that the handing over of documents was set to take place “before judicial review is complete and before President Trump has had the opportunity to be fully and fairly heard.”
Binnall said he would quickly appeal Chutkan’s ruling, adding the case “should be decided after thorough but expeditious consideration pursuant to America’s judicial review process, both before this Court and on appeal, not by a race against the clock.”
Jon has over 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.
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