The committee of the House of Representatives that investigates the assault on the Capitol has fulfilled this Friday its promise to formally summon Donald Trump, who is thus obliged to provide documents and render accounts under oath about his possible prior knowledge of the attack and about his efforts to annul the results of the 2020 elections, which, then and still now, he falsely claimed had been stolen.
The decision of the committee, made up of seven Democratic congressmen and two Republicans, was made unanimously and was made public last week, in the last of nine public sessions held in the Cannon building of the Capitol complex, very close to the access by where the assailants entered the place where the vote was being held on January 6, 2021 to certify the electoral victory of Joe Biden, a democratic process that had always taken place peacefully until that date.
"We recognize that subpoenaing a former president is a significant and historic action," the committee's leaders, Democrat Bennie Thompson (Mississippi) and Republican Liz Cheney (Wyoming), said in a letter to Trump on Friday.
"We do not make this decision lightly."
"As demonstrated in our hearings, we have gathered overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former associates, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-phased effort to nullify the 2020 presidential election and obstruct the peaceful transition of power." you can read in the 10-page letter, signed by Cheney and Thompson.
The appearance of the former president, who is not yet clear that he meets the requirement, is scheduled for November 14, six days after the mid-term legislative elections are held in the United States, in which the entire Congress is renewed. and a third of the Senate.
The polls predict that the Democratic Party will lose control of the Lower House after the appointment at the polls, which would endanger the continuity of the work of the January 6 committee, which in a year and a half has reviewed more than 140,000 documents, and have held more than a thousand interviews.
A good part of the candidates running for election for the Republican Party support the theories, which have been proven time and time again to be false, that there was massive fraud in 2020 that affected the results of the polls.
Even if he decides to appear, Trump could also refuse to answer questions from his interrogators, citing the Fifth Amendment.
This is what some of his most prominent collaborators have done during the process, such as General Michael Flynn.
This Friday, a federal judge in Washington sentenced former Trump collaborator and populist ideologue Steve Bannon to four months in prison and a $6,500 fine (a similar amount in euros) for contempt of the committee.
He was summoned in September 2021, but he refused to testify.
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