F.P. Report
WASHINGTON: The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol has issued unprecedented subpoenas to five Republican members of Congress, seeking to compel their cooperation.
The select committee empowered the chairman, Bennie Thompson, to move ahead with subpoenas to the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama.
The five congressmen flatly refused to accept invitations to provide voluntary assistance to the investigation, sources said.
A spokesperson for the panel declined to comment late on Wednesday night, and did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday morning.
The committee is seeking to compel the Republican members of Congress to share some of the most sensitive information about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sources said.
The Guardian reported earlier this week that the panel was moving closer to issuing subpoenas to Republicans in Congress, appalled at their refusal to assist in any way despite prima facie connections to the events of 6 January.
What changed for members of the committee, according to sources familiar with internal deliberations, was that they could no longer ignore what appeared to be deep involvement in Trump’s unlawful schemes to overturn the 2020 election results.
The scope and targets of the subpoenas are not final until the orders are made public. But the subpoenas were expected to encompass the contents of the letters seeking voluntary cooperation, they said.
That would indicate the committee intends to ask McCarthy about what he knew of the former president’s involvement in, and response to, the Capitol riots, as well as why Trump believed McCarthy was at fault for the riot.
It also suggests House investigators are interested in seeking more detail about meetings between Trump and Republican members of Congress at the White House before the Capitol attack, at which they strategised about how to stop certification of Joe Biden’s win on 6 January.
The letters to Jordan and Biggs made explicit reference to at least one December 2020 meeting that involved the former president and Republicans in Congress, which is understood to have been attended by the House Freedom Caucus, a hard-right group.
The panel made a particularly expansive request to Biggs, also seeking details about what he knew of plans by pro-Trump activists to march from the “Save America” rally at the Ellipse on 6 January to the Capitol, through his contacts with the activist Ali Alexander and others.
Biggs’s potential contacts with Alexander are of special interest to the investigation, sources said.
The committee is trying to untangle claims by Alexander that he “schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting” with Brooks, Biggs and Paul Gosar, another Arizona Republican, and his testimony that he spoke to Biggs’s staff and the congressman himself.
Alexander obtained a permit to hold a rally at the Capitol on 6 January but that event never took place. Alexander was instead filmed going up the Capitol steps in a “stack” formation with members of the Oath Keepers militia.
Thompson said the panel wanted to ask Biggs about his efforts to pressure legislators to create “alternate” slates of electors for Trump in states he lost, as well as an alleged request he made to Trump for a pardon in the days after the Capitol attack.
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