The congressional committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th last year is to subpoena the former president Donald Trump for testimony and documents.
At the conclusion of what may be its final hearing on Thursday, members held a dramatic roll-call vote in which they decided unanimously to seek Mr Trump to give evidence on oath.
The former president in a response on his social media channel said: “Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago? Why did they wait until the very end, the final moments of their last meeting? Because the Committee is a total “BUST” that has only served to further divide our Country which, by the way, is doing very badly — a laughing stock all over the World?”
Many political pundits in Washington believe it is unlikely that the former president will appear before the committee.
The committee is likely to be disbanded if Mr Trump’s Republican Party takes control of the House of Representatives in elections next month.
Any move by the committee to enforce the subpoena would more than likely lead to a lengthy legal battle.
Speaking at the end of the hearing, the chair of the committee Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, said Mr Trump was “the one person at the centre of the story of what happened on January 6th, so we want to hear from him”.
Liz Cheney, the Republican deputy chair of the committee said: “We must seek the testimony under oath of the January 6th central player.”
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The committee showed previously unseen video footage of top US politicians in a secure location while Mr Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol building on January 6th, 2021. The politicians were trying to rally police and military support to disperse the rioters.
The footage showed the leading Democrat politician in the US senate, Chuck Schumer, on the phone with Jeffrey Rosen, the then acting attorney general, urging him to get Mr Trump to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol building.
Committee members also suggested that the US secret service had been alerted to online threats before the January 6th rally by Mr Trump and subsequent riot by his supporters in a bid to delay the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Internal secret service records revealed by the committee showed the agency had been tipped off during December 2020 that protesters could break into the Capitol building and there could be violence.
