(Headline USA) Confronted with the prospect of dissolving with little fanfare following its scheduled hearing Thursday, the House’s partisan Jan. 6 Committee re-upped its effort to remain relevant by issuing a subpoena for former President Donald Trump.
The panel voted unanimously to compel the former president to appear.
“We must seek the testimony under oath of January 6th’s central player,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, one of only two non-Democrats on the panel, who lost her re-election bid as consequence of her involvement in attacks on the GOP’s de-facto party leader.
Despite the feedback from her constituents, Cheney has continued to double down, hinting that she may attempt to run for president in 2024 while pleding to support Democrat candidates in the upcoming midterm election.
“We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion, and every American is entitled to those answers,” said the neocon congresswoman and political scion of former Vice President Dick Cheney, now a favorite of the warmongering Left.
The vote seeking Trump’s testimony comes as the panel was preparing to conclude its prime-time production, promising new evidence and previously unseen footage of congressional leaders phoning officials for help during the assault.
Thus far, it has underdelivered on such promises, with few of its salacious storylines gaining any serious media traction.
Some of the exclusive new footage shows House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, both Democrats, talking to governors in neighboring Virginia and Maryland.
“They’re breaking the law in many different ways—quite frankly at the instigation of the president of the United States,” Pelosi is heard saying at one point, despite evidence that she, herself, was to blame for refusing Trump’s offer to dispatch the National Guard in advance of the mostly peaceful rally.
Only one person was known to have been murdered on Jan. 6—Trump supporter and Air Force veteran Ashley Babbitt, who was killed by Capitol Police with no warning while attempting to crawl through a broken threshold to the House’s inner chamber.
Neither Babbitt’s death nor Pelosi’s role in enabling rioters has been examined as part of the Democrat-run hearings.
The House panel claimed the uprising at the U.S. Capitol was not an isolated incident but a warning of the fragility of the nation’s democracy in the post-Trump era.
Indeed, the protest was a direct response to riots that occurred throughout the country—incliding on the grounds near the White House and the National Mall—following the Minneapolis death of George Floyd and in the leadup to the November 2020 election.
“None of this is normal or acceptable or lawful in a republic,” Cheney said of the protests from her own presumptive political party, while failing to address its antecedent.
“There is no defense that Donald Trump was duped or irrational,” she claimed. “No president can defy the rule of law and act this way in a constitutional republic, period.”
The committee’s 10th public session, just weeks before the congressional midterm elections, was delving into Trump’s “state of mind,” said chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.
Statements from Thompson and Cheney were laden with language frequently seen in criminal indictments. Both lawmakers described Trump as “substantially” involved in the events of Jan. 6. Cheney said Trump had acted in a “premeditated” way.
It was part of a nonstop continuum of legal attacks on Trump from multiple fronts, including the Justice Department and the New York Attorney General’s Office, both of which have launched their own lawfare campaigns against him.
The committee may well make a decision on whether to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department.
Thursday’s hearing opened at a mostly empty Capitol complex, with most lawmakers at home campaigning for reelection. Several people who were among the thousands around the Capitol on Jan. 6 are now running for congressional office, some with Trump’s backing.
To describe the president’s mindset, the committee divulged new material, including interviews with Trump’s top Cabinet officials, aides and associates in which some described the president acknowledging that he had lost.
In one, according to ex-White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin, Trump looked up at a television and said, “Can you believe I lost to this [expletive] guy?”
The committee is also drawing on the trove of 1.5 million documents it received from the U.S. Secret Service, including an email from Dec. 11, 2020, the day the Supreme Court rejected one of the main lawsuits Trump’s team had brought against the election results.
“Just fyi. POTUS is pissed,” the Secret Service wrote, according to documents obtained by the committee.
The session was serving as a closing argument for the panel’s two Republican lawmakers, Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who have essentially been shunned by Trump and their party and will not be returning in the new Congress. Cheney lost her primary election, and Kinzinger decided not to run while faced with the prospects of a bruising primary.
Another committee member, Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a retired Naval commander, is in a tough reelection bid against state Sen. Jen Kiggans, a former Navy helicopter pilot.
The committee, having conducted more than 1,500 interviews and obtained countless documents, has produced a sweeping probe of Trump’s activities from his defeat in the November election to the Capitol attack.
This week’s hearing is to be the final presentation from lawmakers before the midterm elections. But staff members say the investigation continues.
Under committee rules, the Jan. 6 panel is to produce a report of its findings, likely in December. The committee will dissolve 30 days after publication of that report, and with the new Congress in January.
House Republicans are expected to drop the Jan. 6 probe and turn to other investigations if they win control after midterm elections, primarily focusing on Biden, his family and his administration.
More than 850 people have been charged by the Justice Department in the Capitol uprising, some receiving lengthy prison sentences for their roles. Several leaders and associates of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been charged with sedition.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
