After a two-week lull from major public activity, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill was back at it Tuesday, issuing six subpoenas against individuals it claims witnessed efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The panel accused the six targets of pushing conspiracy theories about election fraud, promoting efforts aimed at sabotaging the election results, and possessing important insider information relevant to the committee’s investigation.
JAN. 6 COMMITTEE SUBPOENAS PETER NAVARRO
“The six individuals we’ve subpoenaed today all have knowledge related to those matters and will help the Select Committee better understand all the various strategies employed to potentially affect the outcome of the election. We expect these witnesses to join the hundreds who have cooperated with the Select Committee as we work to provide the American people with answers about the violence of January 6th and its causes,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Jan. 6 committee, said in a statement.
The six subjects of the subpoenas include Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesebro, Christina Bobb, Katherine Friess, Kurt Olsen, and Phillip Kline. The Jan. 6 committee is requesting that they appear for a deposition and provide documents to the committee. Most of the witnesses have low public profiles, but the committee said they have relevant behind-the-scenes information regarding efforts to upend the 2020 election.
For example, it claims Bobb, a reporter for OANN who helped raise funds for the controversial Maricopa County, Arizona, 2020 election audit while covering it, and Friess helped draft an executive order to seize voting machines and that Kline helped establish a meeting between former President Donald Trump and more than 300 state legislators about false claims of voter fraud. The committee also accused Chesebro of bolstering efforts in the Trump campaign to support fake electors in places Trump lost. Olsen was accused of helping draft an executive order calling on the Justice Department to “take voter action.”
The subpoenas highlight a few recurring points of interest in the committee’s investigation. Prior subpoenas showed the committee is eager to paint a picture of what transpired in Washington’s Willard Hotel in the aftermath of the election. The hotel reportedly served as a “war room” for several key allies of Trump, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, and Steve Bannon, to concoct plots to subvert the election results. A target of Tuesday’s subpoena, Bobb, participated in those “war room activities,” according to the subpoena.
Additionally, another target of its subpoenas, Mitchell, participated in Trump’s infamous phone call in early January 2021 in which he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, a number sufficient to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in the state. The committee is seeking information she has about that phone call. Trump is currently facing a criminal investigation by the Fulton County district attorney over whether he illegally attempted to undermine the election results in Georgia.
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On Monday, the White House counsel sent a letter to former Trump White House aides Michael Flynn and Peter Navarro, informing them that the Biden administration will not back their claims of executive privilege, Axios reported. The two men sought to use Trump’s claim of executive privilege to shield them from testifying before the Jan. 6 committee. Flynn was subpoenaed last year, and Navarro was subpoenaed last month.
In addition, the Jan. 6 committee is also gearing up for possible public hearings in mid-April, Thompson told Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell. Many political analysts believe the Democrats are likely to lose the House during the midterm elections later this year. If Republicans take over, they are expected to quash the committee, giving it a little over 10 months to complete its work.
