(Headline USA) Wisconsin’s Republican Assembly leader is suing to block a subpoena that orders him to testify before the U.S. House’s partisan Jan. 6 committee about a conversation he had with Donald Trump about overturning the 2020 election.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos filed the lawsuit on Sunday in federal court in Wisconsin arguing that the subpoena falls outside the scope of the committee’s investigation into last year’s Capitol attack and infringes on his legislative immunity from civil process.
The new lawsuit was assigned to U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama.
Vos, who had a falling out with Trump this summer, also alleged that the short notice of the subpoena placed an undue burden on him.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, committee chair, issued the subpoena Friday ordering Vos to appear on Monday morning either in person or via videoconference.
He did not testify. The deposition was postponed.
In his lawsuit, Vos said the only explanation for the “extreme deadline” was to conduct the interview before the committee’s next televised hearing on Wednesday “so that clips can be edited out to be used in a multimedia show.”
Vos, in a statement Monday, said he was surprised to be subpoenaed because he has no information about the events surrounding the Jan. 6 uprising.
“Given how close we are to the midterms, this subpoena seems to be more about partisan politics than actual fact-finding,” he said.
A letter from Thompson that accompanied the subpoena said lawmakers want to talk with Vos about a July call with Trump in which the former president asked Vos about steps he was taking to challenge the results of the 2020 election.
The call was in response to a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that absentee ballot drop boxes, which were used in the 2020 election and others before it, would be illegal going forward.
After Vos took no action to overturn the election, Trump endorsed his primary challenger.
Vos narrowly won his primary. Three days later, he fired Michael Gableman, the former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice whom he had hired, under pressure from Trump, to investigate the 2020 election.
Vos called Gableman, who also endorsed his primary opponent, an “embarrassment.”
Gableman’s report revealed several alarming instances of election abuse in Wisconsin, including evidence of Democrats infiltrating nursing homes in Racine County and elsewhere, forcing seniors to fill out mail-in ballots for Biden, sometimes against their will.
Evidence also revealed that through two nonprofits funded largely by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, leftist political operatives with links to Obama and billionaire oligarch George Soros had effectively taken over local election offices in places like Green Bay and had been given unfettered access to voting machines, as well as the ability to dictate election policies.
Nonetheless, Vos refused to act on the information, claiming it was insufficient to justify allegations of widespread vote fraud.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
