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| Photo Credit: AP. |
The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 violent siege at the U.S. Capitol Thursday unanimously voted to issue a subpoena to former President Donald Trump to testify before the panel. The move is coming as the committee winds up its work for the year before the November midterms.
In a letter
submitted to the committee on Friday Mr. Trump dismissed the committee as a
“partisan charade” and described the work of the committee as a politically
motivated “witch hunt,” even though he did not mention whether he would honor
the committee’s demands that he testifies before it.
The work of
the committee authorized by Congress will end on January 3, according to The
Associated Press.
More than
1,000 witnesses including many of Trump’s top White House aides and inner
circle were interviewed during the panel’s sitting, where they sought to
establish efforts by the former president to overturn his 2020 election loss as
well as his inaction just as his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6,
2021, The Associated Press reported.
The panel
may formally write to Trump early next week following the authorization of the
subpoena and will set a date for possible interview and lay out requests for
documents, according to The Associated Press.
If Trump refuses
to comply with the subpoena, the panel may have to weigh the practical and
political implications of a vote on holding him in contempt of Congress with
may have to be put to vote at the House.
In July
former Trump era White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was convicted of
contempt of court.
In a letter
on Friday, Trump described the 2020 presidential elections where he lost to
President Joe Biden as “rigged and stolen”.
Mr. Trump accused the Democrats led House of creating a “Committee of highly partisan political Hacks and Thugs whose sole function is to destroy the lives of many hard-working American Patriots, whose records in life have been unblemished until this point of attempted ruination”.