France Press agency
NOS . News••modified
The congressional committee investigating the storming of the Capitol will summon Donald Trump. All nine committee members voted today to summon the former US president. It will likely happen in a few days.
“He’s the one who was at the center of the story of what happened on January 6,” the Democratic committee chair said, commenting on the decision. “So we want to hear him. He needs to be held accountable.”
The inquiry is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans. Today’s hearing, which is expected to be the last before next month’s midterm elections, showed new footage of the day the Capitol was stormed.
It shows, among other things, how the leaders of the House and Senate, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, tried by phone to arrange further security measures. “Why don’t you just ask the president to get out of the Capitol?” Schumer told the then attorney general.
legal battle
By the way, the question is how likely it is that Trump will be called. For example, CNN wrote that “at this late stage” the former president is unlikely to respond. The subpoena is expected to lead to a protracted legal battle.
Trump’s refusal could eventually lead to charges of contempt of Congress, as happened to his former adviser, Steve Bannon, the US news agency said. shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of up to twelve months.
Trump called the subpoena on his Truth Social platform a “joke.” “Why did they wait until the last minute?” he is writing. According to him, the commission only succeeded in dividing the United States even further.
To testify
The parliamentary committee is investigating, among other things, the extent to which Trump can be held responsible for the storming of the Capitol. The former president has not yet appeared before the commission and has tried several times to prevent former employees from testifying.
The former president invoked, among other things, the so-called Executive Franchisethe freedom that superiors are given to consult with advisers without fear of having to testify about this secret decision-making process.
broken into
Five people were killed and dozens injured in the storming of the Capitol in January last year. Several Democrats and Republicans on the investigative committee blamed Trump for the attack. He allegedly incited his supporters to storm the US Capitol.
At the beginning of this year, reporters Mariki de Vries and Lucas Wagmeister presented this retrospective of the storming of the Capitol:
A year after the storming of the Capitol, our reporters bring you back
