US: January 6 panel subpoenas Trump, shows startling new footage

On Thursday, the House January 6 committee voted unanimously to subpoena former President Donald Trump, demanding his personal testimony as it unveiled a startling new video of close aides describing his multi-part plan to overturn his 2020 election loss, which led to his supporters’ fierce assault on the US Capitol.

With alarming messages from the US Secret Service warning of violence, and a vivid new video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders pleading for help, the panel showed the raw desperation at the Capitol. Using language frequently seen in criminal indictments, the panel said Trump had acted in a “premeditated” way ahead of the January 6 riots, despite countless aides and officials telling him he had lost.

Trump is almost certain to fight the subpoena and decline to testify. On his social media outlet, he blasted members for not asking him earlier — though he didn’t say he would have complied — and called the panel “a total bust”.

“We must seek the testimony under oath of January 6′s central player,” said Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the committee’s Vice Chair, ahead of the vote.

In the committee’s 10th public session — just weeks before the congressional midterm elections — the panel summed up Trump’s “staggering betrayal” of his oath of office, as Chairman Bennie Thompson put it, describing the then-president’s unprecedented attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

While the effort to subpoena Trump may languish — more a nod to history than an effective summons — the committee has made clear it is considering whether to send its findings in a criminal referral to the Justice Department.

In one of its most riveting exhibits, the panel showed previously-unseen footage of congressional leaders phoning for help during the assault as Trump refused to call off the mob.

Pelosi can be seen on a call with the governor of neighbouring Virginia, explaining as she shelters with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and others, that the governor of Maryland had also been contacted. Later, the video shows Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders, as the group asks the Defence Department for help.

“They’re breaking the law in many different ways,” Pelosi says at one point.

“And quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the President of the United States.”

The footage also portrays Vice President Mike Pence — not Trump — stepping in to help calm the violence, telling Pelosi and the others that he had spoken with Capitol Police, as Congress planned to resume its session that night to certify Biden’s election.

The video was from Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra, a documentary filmmaker.

In never-before-seen Secret Service messages, the panel produced evidence that extremist groups provided the muscle in the fight for Trump’s presidency, planning weeks before the attack to send a violent force to Washington.

The Secret Service warned in an email, dated December 26, 2020, of a tip that members of the right-wing Proud Boys planned to outnumber the police in a march in Washington on January 6.

“It felt like the calm before the storm,” one Secret Service agent wrote in a group chat.

To describe the president’s mindset, the committee presented new and previously seen material, including interviews with Trump’s top aides and Cabinet officials — such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General William Barr and Labour Secretary Eugene Scalia — in which some described the president acknowledging he had lost.

Ex-White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin said Trump once looked up at a television and said, “Can you believe I lost to this [expletive] guy?”

Cabinet members also said in interviews shown at the hearing that they believed that once-legal avenues had been exhausted, that should have been the end of Trump’s efforts to remain in power.

“In my view, that was the end of the matter,” Barr said, of the December 14 vote of the Electoral College.

However, this was only the beginning of Trump's last-ditch efforts — as the president summoned the crowd to Washington on January 6.

The panel showed clips of Trump at his rally near the White House that day, saying the opposite of what he had been told. He then tells supporters that he would march with them to the Capitol. That never happened.

“There is no defence that Donald Trump was duped or irrational,” said Cheney.

“No president can defy the rule of law and act this way in our constitutional republic, period.”

Thursday’s hearing opened at a mostly-empty Capitol complex, with most lawmakers at home campaigning. Several people who were among the thousands around the Capitol on January 6 are now running for congressional office, some with Trump’s backing. Police officers who fought the mob filled the hearing room’s front row.

The House panel said the insurrection at the Capitol was not an isolated incident, but a warning of the fragility of the nation’s democracy in the post-Trump era.

Trump faces various state and federal investigations over his actions in the election and its aftermath.

• Americas