The House select committee investigating the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot issued a subpoena on Friday to Donald Trump, asking that the former president testify before the committee and provide records related to his actions during the riot.
The subpoena comes one week after the committee voted unanimously to subpoena Trump and requires the former president to turn over documents by November 4 and to appear for a deposition on November 14.
The committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.), said before the vote last week that Trump is “the one person at the center of the story of January 6,” adding, “so we want to hear from him.”
“It is our obligation to seek Donald Trump’s testimony,” Thompson said.
He added that the committee recognizes that the decision to subpoena a former president is a “serious and extraordinary action.”
“That’s why we want to take this step in full view of the American people,” he said.
Earlier on Friday, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison after being convicted of contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena issued by the January 6 committee.
If Trump does not comply with the subpoena, the committee will be left to decide if they will vote to hold him in criminal contempt of Congress. If the panel votes to do so, the matter would then head to the full House for a vote.
Representative Liz Cheney (R., Wyo), the committee’s vice chairwoman, said this week that if the president refuses to comply with the subpoena, the lawmakers plan to “take the steps we need to take after that.”
Trump responded to the committee’s vote last week, writing in a post on his Truth Social platform asking why the “Unselect Committee” didn’t ask him to testify months ago.
“Why did they wait until the very end, the final moments of their last meeting?” he wrote. “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 later wrote a lengthy letter attacking the committee and repeating false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. He did not say whether he planned to comply with the subpoena.
“You have not gone after the people that created the fraud, but rather great American patriots who questioned it, as is their constitutional right,” Trump wrote in the letter on October 14. “These people have had their lives ruined as your committee sits back and basks in the glow.”
Trump has told aides that he would be willing to testify, but only if he could do so live, a source reportedly told the New York Times. Committee members are open to the idea, according to the report.