The Subpoena of the Jan 6 Subcommittee on What Happens in the House of Representatives During the November 2016 Session
A coda to its public hearings, the subpoena might not lead to Trump’s testimony and handing over of documents, but it will act as a teaser for what’s to come.
The committee still has a report to publish and could also request that the Justice Department pursue charges against Trump or his former aides for their roles in helping to incite the attack on the Capitol and their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
CNN’s John King said that the committee’s subpoena of Trump was attempting to make the case that he is Oz. “He presents himself as all powerful, but when you look, it’s actually a little guy behind a curtain trying to pull a machine.”
Contempt. The full House, which is controlled by Democrats until at least January, could vote to hold him in contempt of Congress, something it’s done with several other uncooperative witnesses.
The Justice Department can use the referral from Congress to prosecute, as happened with Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon and his once economic adviser Peter Navarro.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/trump-subpoena-jan-6-committee-what-matters/index.html
On Trump’s Jan 6 Subpoena Assumption: Using the Fifth Amendment to Protect himself from a Supreme Court Insight
“None of that is going to happen,” the Trump critic and conservative lawyer George Conway predicted during an appearance on CNN Thursday. This is about making a hole in the ground. This is about triggering a response (from Trump).”
Conway did point out the Supreme Court has already made clear where it stands on Trump’s status as a former president when it ignored his attempt to block the National Archives from sharing information with the committee.
But the Justice Department, rather than go after Trump for ignoring congressional subpoena, if it comes to that, has arguably larger and more important inquiries that involve his treatment of classified documents after he left the White House and his effort to overturn the election as president.
Cheney, who serves as vice chair of the House committee, singled out people who invoked the Fifth Amendment or refused to testify rather than elaborate on their communications with Trump on January 6, 2021, including:
Most recently, in 1974, Gerald Ford testified voluntarily as president before a House subcommittee about his decision to pardon former President Richard Nixon.
President Thomas Jefferson declined to appear at former Vice President Aaron Burr’s trial for treason even though he was subpoenaed by then-Chief Justice John Marshall. Jefferson provided some documents. The man was acquitted.
The Supreme Court did rule New York investigators could get access to the financial documents. The Trump company is going on a trial this month for violating tax laws.
He was ordered to obey subpoenas from the New York Attorney General as part of a civil inquiry. He used the Fifth Amendment to protect himself during the deposition.
James sued Trump, his three oldest kids and the Trump Organization. On Thursday, James asked a state court to block Trump from moving assets to shield them from the lawsuit.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/trump-subpoena-jan-6-committee-what-matters/index.html
Subpoenaing Mike Pence with a Criminal Investigation and the Senate January 6 Committee: An Update on Pence’s Executive Privilege
The January 6 committee must wrap up all of its work by January 3,23 if it is going to continue after the next Congress.
Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly invoked the legal protection to block testimony of his allies and subpoenas related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He may do so again in response to Pence’s subpoena.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence was in charge of presiding over the electoral certification process. In the days and hours before the mob attacked the Capitol, Trump subjected his vice president to intense pressure to overturn the 2020 election results. There were several critical meetings with Trump and his associates ahead of January 6.
Executive privilege is a legal protection that allows the president of the United States to keep their private communications away from Congress and courts.
“At its core, it’s the idea that some documents and some information — if it were disclosed — would damage, harm the public interest or harm the country in some way,” explained Jonathan Shaub, a former Justice Department official who is now a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law.
According to legal experts, the protection allows the president’s advisers to give candid advice without fear of being exposed, which will make the president’s deliberations more productive.
The idea dates to the Nixon administration, when a special prosecutor leading the investigation of the Watergate break-in subpoenaed President Richard Nixon for tapes and transcripts of conversations related to the burglary.
The court found that there was confidentiality interest in communications between a president and their senior-most advisers. When a criminal investigation is relevant to the communication, executive privilege doesn’t apply.
For example, in Nixon’s case, the Supreme Court found a compelling interest in the criminal case against the Watergate burglars, since there was a “demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/11/1156205144/mike-pence-subpoena-executive-privilege
Why Do U.S. Attorneys Need Executive Privilege? A Case Study During the Capitol Controversy and the DOJ
Legal experts said that most disputes over executive privilege have been resolved through compromise between those asking and those providing.
During the investigation of the Capitol attack the issue was brought up many times. The committee subpoenaed numerous Trump aides and advisers, several of whom refused to testify on the basis of executive privilege. The DOJ brought criminal charges against two of the advisers, one was found guilty of contempt of Congress after his refusal to testify. The contempt case against another, Peter Navarro, is expected sometime this year.)
A court ruled against Trump last year after he tried to stop the release of documents related to Jan. 6.
The former president has also tried to use executive privilege to block testimony to a federal grand jury, but those efforts have been less successful, the New York Times has reported.
A subpoena issued by the Department of Justice is harder to ignore, said Victoria Nourse, a former DOJ official who also served as chief counsel to the vice president of the United States under then-Vice President Joe Biden. The process to get a judge to enforce congressional subpoenas is slow, meaning that they lack teeth.
A vice president often asks the president to grant them executive privilege, said Nourse who is now a professor at Georgetown Law. That would be a question in the forefront of everyone’s mind: whether Trump will do that for Indiana’s governor.
The battle in court might follow if Trump asserts executive privilege. There isn’t an executive privilege for a crime. If they wanted a judge to adjudicate the case, the question was how far they wanted to go.