January 6 committee issues 10 more subpoenas

Panel seeks depositions from Kayleigh McEnany, Stephen Miller and other former Trump aides.

Kayleigh McEnany and Stephen Miller on the hustings with Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

A federal judge said records from the Trump White House can be turned over to the US House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6 assault on the US Capitol, rejecting a request by former president Donald Trump to block their disclosure.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan said late on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) that congress should have access to the records.

“The public interest lies in permitting – not enjoining – the combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to and occurred on January 6, and to consider legislation to prevent such events from ever occurring again,” she ruled.

Mr Trump filed suit last month in a bid to stop the National Archives from turning over records from his time in office to Capitol Hill investigators. He argued legislators’ requests were improper and covered materials protected by executive privilege.

The judge said Mr Trump was unlikely to succeed on those arguments and denied his request for a preliminary injunction to block disclosure to the house panel. The National Archives is scheduled to give the records to the committee on Friday.

Mr Trump has signalled in court papers he would immediately appeal any adverse ruling.

The House select committee, which is investigating the causes and circumstances of the January 6 storming of the Capitol, has sought a variety of White House records related to the day’s events.

They include communications about Mr Trump’s speech to supporters before they converged on the Capitol, as well as the response within the White House when violence began to unfold. The committee also asked the National Archives for records related to Mr Trump’s unsuccessful and unfounded attempts to stop the certification of the 2020 election.

The committee earlier issued subpoenas to 10 former Trump administration officials, including former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and senior adviser Stephen Miller.

The committee is seeking depositions and records from the aides to former Mr Trump, with deadlines later this month and next month. “We need to know precisely what role the former president and his aides played in efforts to stop the counting of the electoral votes and if they were in touch with anyone outside the White House attempting to overturn the outcome of the election,” said the committee’s Democrat chairman, Bennie Thompson.

Also subpoenaed were Chris Liddell, a former White House deputy chief of staff; Nicholas Luna, Mr Trump’s personal ­assistant who reportedly was in the Oval Office with the president on January 6; John McEntee, former White House personnel director; Ben Williamson, deputy assistant to Mr Trump and senior adviser to then-chief of staff Mark Meadows; Keith Kellogg, who served as then-vice president Mike Pence’s national security adviser; Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as special assistant to the president for legislative affairs; Molly Michael, special assistant to the president and Oval Office operations co-ordinator; and Kenneth Klukowski, former senior counsel to Assistant Attorney-General Jeffrey Clark.

Mr Trump blasted the committee and repeated false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

“That’s right, the Committee is studying the PROTEST when it should be studying the Fraudulent Election that led to the protest,” he said.

The committee’s latest batch of subpoenas follows on the heels of six subpoenas issued by the committee on Monday, targeting close allies and campaign officials of Mr Trump. Among them: William Stepien, manager of the Trump 2020 re-election campaign; Michael Flynn, his one-time national security adviser and John Eastman, a lawyer.

The Justice Department is considering whether to charge former Trump strategist Steve Bannon with contempt of congress for defying a subpoena sent by the committee after the house referred it for possible prosecution.

The select committee is led by Mr Thompson and Republican vice-chairwoman Liz Cheney. It was established in June in a largely party-line vote after congressional Republican leaders and Mr Trump opposed creation of an outside, bipartisan commission.

The probe is looking into the causes and security failures of the January 6 assault on the Capitol, when supporters of Mr Trump overran the building and temporarily halted certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s electoral college victory. Mr Trump was impeached by the house in January for inciting an insurrection, and he was acquitted in the Senate.

The Wall Street Journal