After 14 months of House J6 hearings, the select committee threw a Hail Mary for relevance by subpoenaing former President Trump.
Since its Thursday hearing was the last scheduled hearing of the J6 committee this term, issuing a subpoena is superfluous. Most political observers believe Republicans will regain control of the House of Representatives in the midterm election. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refused to seat any Republicans nominated for the committee by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
Analysts view the expected Republican tide to spell the end of the lopsidedly Democratic panel. Its effort to subpoena a former president is considered political grandstanding unlikely to achieve anything.
Former President Donald Trump surprised the committee by reportedly expressing a willingness to speak with the committee on one condition. Trump has privately indicated a willingness to testify before the committee as long as he gets to do so live, according to a New York Times report.
“He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6,” said J6 committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi.
“He must be accountable,” Thompson said. “He is required to answer for his actions.”
Trump “loves the idea of testifying” before the House J6 Committee, a source close to the former president reportedly told Fox News Digital after the panel unanimously voted to subpoena him.
The source reportedly noted, if Trump testified, he would “talk about how corrupt the election was, how corrupt the committee was, and how Nancy Pelosi did not call up the National Guard that Trump strongly recommended for her to do three days earlier on January 3, 2021.”
Trump castigated Thompson in a Thursday letter for not investigating Speaker Pelosi and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser’s refusal to allow stationing the troops he requested and authorized for January 6, 2021.
The former president remarked that if even a small percent of National Guard troops had been deployed or fencing installed, January 6 would have been just another day in the life of the nation. He blasted Thompson for declaring Pelosi and Bowser “off limits” for the committee.
