Jan. 6 committee votes to subpoena Trump

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection held its 10th public hearing, unveiling new evidence and video that showed how former President Donald Trump knew he had lost the election but still went forward with efforts to overturn the results, leading to the attack at the US Capitol.

During the hearing, the panel also voted unanimously to subpoena Trump. It’s rare but not without precedent for Congress to subpoena sitting and former presidents for testimony.

Additionally, in the roughly three months since the last hearing, the panel has obtained more than 1 million records from the Secret Service. These messages revealed agents spotted numerous guns in the crowd the morning of Jan. 6 before Trump was set to speak at the Ellipse. Agents were also aware of the involvement of right-wing groups.

Here are some other key takeaways:

Never-before-seen footage, obtained exclusively by CNN, shows in vivid new detail how congressional leaders fled the US Capitol on Jan. 6 and transformed a nearby military base into a command center, where they frantically coordinated with Vice President Mike Pence and Trump Cabinet members to quell the insurrection and finish certifying the 2020 election. 

The Jan. 6 select committee aired snippets of the footage at its public hearing on Thursday, but CNN has obtained roughly an hour of additional material that wasn't presented by the panel. 

Congressional leaders contemplated, far more seriously than previously known, whether to reconvene the Electoral College proceedings at Fort McNair, the footage obtained by CNN reveals. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with Pence about the "backup plan," and officials tried to figure out how they'd transport hundreds of lawmakers to the Army base. 

The extended raw footage shines a devastating light on then-President Donald Trump's inaction during the riot. Lawmakers are seen working around Trump to secure any help they could get -- from the National Guard, federal agencies and local police departments -- to defeat the mob he incited.

The footage was captured by Alexandra Pelosi, a documentary filmmaker and daughter of the Democratic speaker of the House. The filmmaker provided some of her behind-the-scenes footage to the Jan. 6 House select committee investigating the insurrection.

In one dramatic scene, then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer shouted at the Secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, after hearing a rumor that Trump blocked the DC National Guard from rushing to the Capitol. 

McCarthy then assures Schumer that there was no stand-down order for the National Guard.  

And in another shocking moment, Schumer and Pelosi are seen talking to the acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. In a heated phone call, Schumer told Rosen that federal authorities should "make arrests, starting now," but Rosen only offered a halting, non-committal response.

Keep reading.

The House Jan. 6 committee took the extraordinary and theatrical step of voting to subpoena former President Donald Trump on Thursday.

A coda to its public hearings, the subpoena might not lead to Trump’s testimony and handing over of documents, but it will act as a teaser for what’s to come.

The committee still has a report to publish and could also request that the Justice Department pursue charges against Trump or his former aides for their roles in helping to incite the attack on the Capitol and their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

What happens now? Trump could decide to comply. The committee would then negotiate a time, place and method. That would take time.

If he refuses to comply with the subpoena, here’s what could happen:

This sequence of events seems far-fetched for Trump.

“None of that is going to happen,” the Trump critic and conservative lawyer George Conway predicted during an appearance on CNN on Thursday. “This is about laying a marker. This is about triggering a response [from Trump].”

Trump responded on social media, calling the committee a “BUST” and a “laughing stock” and accusing members of dividing the country.

Conway did point out the Supreme Court has already made clear where it stands on Trump’s status as a former president when it ignored his attempt to block the National Archives from sharing information with the committee.

The court, notably, also declined on Thursday to intervene on Trump’s behalf in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents inquiry.

But the Justice Department, rather than go after Trump for ignoring a congressional subpoena, if it comes to that, has arguably larger and more important inquiries that involve his treatment of classified documents after he left the White House and his effort to overturn the election as president.

Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming said the Jan. 6 committee feels it has enough information to make referrals to the Department of Justice for prosecutions stemming from the committee’s work. And she noted that more than 30 witnesses have invoked Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination with regard to their dealings with the former President.

While Thursday's hearing will be the Jan. 6 committee's last one before the midterm elections, the panel’s work is not yet complete, and aides have cautioned against the hearing being the panel’s final word, noting that the investigation is still ongoing.

The committee just recently interviewed Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and the panel last month subpoenaed Wisconsin GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos for testimony, which Vos sued to stop.

The select committee’s investigation has also been working toward a final report, though it’s still not clear what shape that will take or when it might be released. Sources say the panel has also not yet made any decision on whether to make any criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.

But regardless of the status of the investigation, the committee has an external deadline less than three months away: The end of the 117th Congress on Jan. 3, 2023, when Republicans are favored to take control of the House in the midterms.

Should former President Donald Trump object to the committee's subpoena, it could lead to a lengthy court fight that outlives the committee.

One person whose testimony was noticeably absent from the House select committee's hearing on Thursday was Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Committee members interviewed Thomas last month but ultimately her testimony was not featured as part of the last hearing before the midterm election.

Despite saying for months that they wanted to hear from Thomas, members downplayed the significance of her testimony following her interview, and it was clear ahead of Thursday that she was not expected to be a central part of the hearing that was instead solely focused on former President Donald Trump.

But her absence was notable considering the panel did use testimony from several other high-profile witnesses who had been interviewed since the committee’s most recent hearing earlier this summer.

Some context: Members of the panel have long said they are interested in speaking with Thomas, particularly after CNN first reported text messages she exchanged with then-Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The texts show Thomas urging Meadows to continue the fight to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

The committee also has email correspondence between Thomas and Trump’s election attorney John Eastman.

Asked if the Jan. 6 committee is prepared to go to court if former President Donald Trump fails to comply with the subpoena, the panel's chair Rep. Bennie Thompson said, “Let’s just see what happens.”

“He’s a former President, we hope that he honors it,” he added.

Thompson also said the subpoena of the former President would allow him to “clear the record” of his own culpability in the events that led to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

“What we presented today clearly shows the President’s culpability in what occurred on Jan. 6. So if he wants to clear the record, he will have an opportunity to do it,” Thompson said. 

When pressed by CNN’s Sara Murray on why Trump would comply with the subpoena when he’s already under criminal investigation and knows the work of the Jan. 6 committee will end, Thompson said, “Well, ask Donald Trump.”

Asked whether there are concerns about getting the work done before the new Congress, he said: “well we’ll do our work until we sunset."

Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the Jan. 6 committee, told CNN that the panel is not planning to subpoena former Vice President Mike Pence, after they voted to subpoena former President Donald Trump on Thursday afternoon.

The Democrat from Mississippi answered "no" when asked by CNN’s Manu Raju whether it was in the committee's plans.

Thompson also told CNN that the committee’s previous interest in hearing from Pence has waned, saying “we have collected enough evidence" that Pence "did his job."

"We now need to hear from the President," he added.

Former President Donald Trump is blasting the Jan. 6 committee’s unanimous vote to subpoena him for documents and testimony.

“Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago?" he wrote on his Truth Social social media platform, using a derisive moniker for the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack.

"Why did they wait until the very end, the final moments of their last meeting? Because the Committee is a total 'BUST' that has only served to further divide our Country which, by the way, is doing very badly - A laughing stock all over the World?”

Trump has prevented many of his aides from sharing with the committee, urging them to invoke privilege.

More context: The vote took place at the end of today's Jan. 6 hearing, as the panel made its case that Trump lied about the outcome of the 2020 election and spurred on a violent mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol.

It’s rare but not without precedent for Congress to subpoena sitting and former presidents for testimony. The action is expected to trigger a prolonged court battle over Trump’s possible compliance, which could even outlast the committee itself.

Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson said the need to hear from Trump "goes beyond our fact-finding," framing it as a question of "accountability to the American people."

Trump has previously derided the panel as an “Unselect Committee of Political Thugs and Hacks” and said its members are “evil, sinister and unpatriotic.”

CNN's Manu Raju, Jamie Gangel, Annie Grayer and Clare Foran contributed reporting to this post. 

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the Jan. 6 committee, told CNN the reason the panel felt it needed to subpoena former President Donald Trump is because it has been unable to nail down his specific actions and conversations.

Raskin added that witnesses closest to Trump, who could provided specifics, have pled the Fifth when interviewed by the committee.

Raskin pushed back on the notion that this subpoena would merely be a symbolic act that gets tied up in court.

“I want to believe that every American citizen who knows something about these events would come forward to testify and nobody knows more about them than Donald Trump," he said.

But when pressed again on how the committee will handle Trump’s efforts to likely block this subpoena, Raskin said, “we haven't discussed that because you're several hypothetical steps down the road from us. But I'll say this, we certainly have litigated in the past, and I think we've got a pretty unbroken track record of winning our cases precisely because all we're asking people to do is to come forward and testify. And the Supreme Court has been perfectly clear that Congress has the power to do that.”