Former US President Donald Trump. Photo: 2021 Getty Images
The US House of Representatives committee investigating the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol voted today to subpoena Donald Trump, an action that could eventually result in the former president's imprisonment if he does not comply.
The House select committee's seven Democratic and two Republican members voted 9-0 in favour of issuing a subpoena for Trump to provide documents and testimony under oath in connection with the attack.
"He is the one person at the centre of the story of what happened on Jan 6, so we want to hear from him," said the panel's Democratic chair Representative Bennie Thompson.
The vote came after the committee spent more than two hours making its case - via statements from members, documents, and recorded testimony - that Trump planned to deny his 2020 election defeat in advance, failed to call off the thousands of supporters who stormed the Capitol, and followed through with his false claims the election was stolen even as close advisers told him he had lost.
Federal law says that failure to comply with a congressional subpoena for testimony or documents is a misdemeanour, punishable by one to 12 months imprisonment. If the select committee recommends a subpoena that is ignored, the full House must vote on whether to make a referral to the Department of Justice, which has the authority to decide whether to bring charges.
The House select committee has been investigating the attack on the Capitol, which left more than 140 police officers injured and led to several deaths, for more than a year, interviewing over 1000 witnesses.
Photo: 2021 Getty Images
Supreme Court rejects Trump challenge
Also today, the US Supreme Court on rejected Trump's bid to have an independent arbiter vet classified documents that were seized by the FBI from his Florida home as part of his legal battle against investigators probing his handling of sensitive government records.
The justices in a brief order denied Trump's 4 October emergency request to lift a lower court's decision that prevented the arbiter from reviewing more than 100 documents marked as classified that were among the roughly 11,000 records seized at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on 8 August.
There were no publicly noted dissents by any of the nine justices to the decision, which came two days after the US Justice Department urged them to deny Trump's request and keep the classified documents out of the hands of the arbiter, known as a special master.
The court's 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump, who left office in January 2021.
Federal officials obtained a court-approved warrant to search Trump's residence in a Justice Department criminal investigation after suspecting that not all classified documents in his possession had been returned after his presidency ended.
Investigators searched for evidence of potential crimes related to unlawfully retaining national defence information and obstructing a federal investigation. Trump has denied wrongdoing and has called the investigation politically motivated.
Trump went to court on 22 August in a bid to restrict Justice Department access to the documents as it pursues its criminal investigation.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon last month agreed to Trump's request to temporarily block the government from using the seized materials in its investigation until the special master determined if any could be deemed personal or subject to attorney-client confidentiality or executive privilege - a legal doctrine that shields some White House communications from disclosure - and thus off limits to investigators.
Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, named retired US Judge Raymond Dearie as the special master. Cannon later refused a Justice Department request to partially lift her order relating only to the documents bearing classified markings of confidential, secret or top secret, which the government argued was impeding an effort to mitigate national security risks from their possible unauthorized disclosure.
Cannon said she could not accept that the documents were indeed classified without review by Dearie.
The Justice Department appealed to the Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which then put on hold Cannon's decisions related to the classified documents, an action that prevented Dearie from vetting them while letting the government resume its probe. The 11th Circuit noted the importance of limiting access to classified information and ensuring the department's probe would not be harmed.
A photo attached as evidence to a court filing by the US District Court Southern District of Florida, of documents allegedly seized at Mar-a-Lago spread over a carpet. Photo: AFP / US Department of Justice
The 11th Circuit also rejected any suggestion that Trump had declassified the documents - as the former president has claimed - saying there was "no evidence" of such action and that the argument was a "red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal."
The three statutes underpinning the search warrant used by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago make it a crime to mishandle government records, regardless of their classification status.
The department's investigation also seeks to determine who accessed classified materials, whether they were compromised and if any remain unaccounted for.
Trump's lawyers previously told the Supreme Court that Dearie should be able to vet the records and that the Justice Department has "attempted to criminalize a document management dispute and now vehemently objects to a transparent process that provides much-needed oversight."
- Reuters