Jan 6 hearing updates: panel votes to subpoena Donald Trump – as it happened

The January 6 committee held what is likely to be its last public hearing, and made the case that Donald Trump, above anyone else, is to blame for the deadly attack on the US Capitol. Here are five takeaways from today’s meeting:

• In the final minutes of its two-and-a-half hour hearing, the panel subpoenaed the former president, with committee member Jamie Raskin saying they hope his testimony will clarify aspects of the attack they haven’t been able to uncover. Trump hasn’t yet responded to the summons, but don’t be surprised if he follows the practice of his most loyal former officials and fights it.

• The Secret Service is in for continued scrutiny, with committee member Pete Aguilar warning the panel may recall witnesses with knowledge of Trump’s allegedly explosive behavior on January 6, when his protective detail declined to drive him to the Capitol. Aguilar also warned “the committee is reviewing testimony regarding potential obstruction on this issue,” and to expect more details about this in its forthcoming report.

• Officials in the Trump White House looked to fire up his supporters ahead of the president’s speech on January 6 – then pled ignorance as the Secret Service and other security agencies began getting reports the president’s most ardent supporters were planning violence.

• Even as he plotted to stop Joe Biden from taking over the White House, Trump acted like a man who had lost re-election, signing an order to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and Somalia before his term was over, which would have been a huge undertaking.

• All along, Trump planned to declare victory even before all the ballots were counted – a fact that one of his most extreme supporters Roger Stone stated openly to a documentary crew.

The January 6 committee wasn’t today’s only story:

• The supreme court rejected Trump’s attempt to get justices to weigh in on his attempt to complicate the federal investigation into government secrets found at Mar-a-Lago.

• The United States and Saudi Arabia are waging a war of words over the Opec+ oil production cut and Washington’s claim Riyadh has aligned itself with Russia.

• The New York attorney general has warned Trump and his business are taking steps to undermine her lawsuit against them, and asked a judge to step in.

• Social security recipients are getting a big increase in monthly payments – but only because inflation is so high.

CNN has lately been tracking who comes and goes from a federal courthouse in Washington, where a grand jury investigating the January 6 attack is meeting.

The latest visitors: former vice-president Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short and Kash Patel, a national security aide in the Trump White House, CNN reports.

The two men had nothing to say when the network asked what brought them there, but it’s not surprising to hear that Short turned up. He was a foe of Trump’s plot to steal the 2020 election and cooperated with the January 6 committee.

Patel, however, promoted various baseless lies about the election and is seen as loyal to the former president.

Why subpoena Trump? Here’s what CNN was told by Jamie Raskin, a Democratic committee member:

CNN has more from the January 6 committee’s Democratic chair Bennie Thompson about what he expects to result from lawmakers’ subpoena to Donald Trump:

Punchbowl News says the subpoena issue may likely linger beyond the 8 November midterms:

And that’s it. With their vote to subpoena Donald Trump, the January 6 committee concluded what lawmakers have hinted is likely to be their last public presentation of evidence.

But the group’s work is far from over. Trump may very well reject their order to testify, and head to court to fight it. Meanwhile, the lawmakers have a report to finish, and said they’re not done asking questions of the Secret Service and what it knew about Trump’s behavior and plans for that day.

The committee’s mandate expires when the current Congress ends on the final day of the year, and at least two of their members will not be returning to their chamber. While they have not said definitively, the just-concluded hearing is likely the last time they will all be seen in public together – though there’s always the chance they schedule another hearing.

The January 6 committee has unanimously voted to subpoena Donald Trump, in a long-shot attempt to compel his testimony before the bipartisan congressional panel investigating his supporters’ attack on the US Capitol.

“We have left no doubt knowing that Donald Trump led an effort to upend American democracy that directly resulted in the violence of January 6,” the committee’s chair Bennie Thompson said. “He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on January 6. We want to hear from him.”

Trump seems certain to challenge the subpoena by the panel, which has already taken testimony from a number of former top officials in his White House.

Thompson said there was precedent for subpoenaing a president, and for him to provide testimony to Congress.

“We also recognize that a subpoena to a former president is a serious and extraordinary action. That’s why we want to take this step in full view of the American people, especially because the subject matter issue is so important,” Thompson said before the committee voted.

Today’s public hearing is likely to be the committee’s last, but the lawmakers are expected to release a report on the insurrection before the year’s end.

The January 6 committee has juxtaposed gripping footage of Democratic congressional leaders pleading for help as the Capitol is stormed with Trump administration officials making clear that the president could have quickly disseminated a message to condemn the rioters – but chose not to.

The footage showed insurrectionists fighting with police and overrunning the Capitol, while top lawmakers including House speaker Nancy Pelosi and top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer pled for reinforcements from the department of defense and the governor of Virginia.

Led by Democrat Jamie Raskin, the committee then showed previously aired testimony by top administration officials saying that Trump could have quickly made a public address to call off rioters, and showed video footage of them listening to a message sent during the insurrection where he asked them – albeit tepidly – to go home.

“It was President Lincoln at the start of the civil war in 1861, who best explained why democracy rejects insurrection. Insurrection, he said, is a war upon the first principle of popular government, the rights of the people. American democracy belongs to all the American people, not to a single man,” Raskin said, as he concluded his testimony.

The supreme court has turned down an appeal from Donald Trump as he tries to frustrate the federal investigation into government secrets discovered at Mar-a-Lago.

Earlier this month, Trump asked the supreme court to allow a special master to review 100 classified documents as part of his efforts to exclude privileged information from the investigation.

If granted, the special master could have excluded some classified files from being used in the federal case, where prosecutors may level charges against Trump for unlawfully keeping government documents after his term in the White House ended.

The hearing has resumed, with Democratic congressman Pete Aguilar addressing one of the most shocking revelations from its hearings over the summer.

In June, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson related hearing a story that Trump had lunged for the steering wheel of his vehicle as he demanded his unwilling Secret Service agents drive him to the Capitol just as it was being attacked by his supporters. Aguilar said the committee had uncovered additional evidence corroborating this story.

“After concluding its review of the voluminous additional Secret Service communications from January 5, and January 6, the committee will be recalling witnesses and conducting further investigative depositions based on that material. Following that activity, we will provide even greater detail in our final report,” he said.

“And I will also note this, the committee is reviewing testimony regarding potential obstruction on this issue, including testimony about advice given not to tell the committee about this specific topic. We will address this matter in our report.”

The Secret Service has come under scrutiny for what it knew about the attack, particularly after it was revealed that the agency erased all its text messages from around the time of the insurrection in what it says was a pre-planned technology upgrade.

The January 6 committee is now on a 10-minute recess after Democratic congressman Adam Schiff finished presenting evidence, which showed how the Secret Service documented numerous threats before January 6 – some of which were encouraged by Trump’s White House staff.

“I got the based FIRED up,” White House adviser Jason Miller wrote in a text message to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. Miller included a link to a website where supporters of the president wrote comments like, “Gallows don’t require electricity”, “If the filthy commie maggots try to push their fraud through, there will be hell to pay”, and “Our lawmakers in Congress can leave one of two ways: one, in a body bag, two after rightfully certifying Trump the winner.”

“If I had seen something of that nature I would have said, we got to flag this for Secret Service or something of that nature,” Miller told the committee’s investigators when they asked him about the texts.

Schiff said that despite testimony from some White House staffers and Secret Service agents that they had no warnings of violence before January 6, “evidence strongly suggests that this testimony is not credible.” He went on to detail how the Secret Service was monitoring online threats ahead of the joint session of Congress to certify Biden’s election win, including against vice-president Mike Pence. One threatening post said would be “a dead man walking if he doesn’t do the right thing”.

Schiff said Trump was able to hear how angry his supporters were the night before the insurrection, when he opened the door in the White House’s Oval Office and heard them gathering a few blocks away.

“The president knew the crowd was angry because he had stoked that anger. He knew that they believe that the election had been rigged and stolen because he had told them falsely that it had been rigged and stolen,” Schiff said. “And by the time he incited that angry mob to march on the Capitol, he knew they were armed and dangerous. All the better to stop the peaceful transfer of power.”

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has confirmed that once the January 6 committee finishes publicly presenting evidence today, it will vote to subpoena Donald Trump:

Now led by Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, the committee is shifting into records newly obtained from the Secret Service, which show agents were receiving tips about plans for violence on January 6.

According to one tip detailed by Schiff, “the Proud Boys plan to march armed into DC. They think that they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed, the source reported, and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped. The source went on to say their plan is to literally kill people. Please take this tip seriously and investigate further.”

“The Secret Service had advance information more than 10 days beforehand regarding the Proud Boys planning for January 6. We know now, of course, that the Proud Boys and others did lead the assault on our Capitol building,” Schiff said.

At its hearing, the January 6 committee plans to vote to subpoena Donald Trump, NBC News reports:

The hearing is ongoing, with lawmakers outlining various ways Trump attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in which Joe Biden won the White House.

Despite all his bluster and scheming, the committee, now led by Republican Adam Kinzinger, is arguing that Trump was well aware he had lost.

Case in point: eight days after the 3 November election, he issued an order for the withdrawal of American troops from Somalia and Afghanistan before Joe Biden was to take office in late January. The task would have been a huge, potentially unfeasible logistical undertaking, and the committee played testimony showing several defense staffers viewed it as a dangerous move that would have undercut allies globally.

“Knowing that he had lost and that he had only weeks left in office, President Trump rushed to complete his unfinished business,” Kinzinger said. “Keep in mind, the order was for an immediate withdrawal. It would have been catastrophic, and yet President Trump signed the order. These are the highly consequential actions of a president who knows his term will shortly end.”

Biden ended up ordering the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was completed later in 2021. As for Somalia, Trump did order a withdrawal, but Biden reversed it last year.

Roger Stone has made an appearance. The Trump ally and Richard Nixon fan is shown, in footage obtained from a documentary team, advocating for Trump to declare victory before the ballots had been counted.

“The key thing to do is to claim victory,” Stone says. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law. No, we won, fuck you. Sorry, over. You’re wrong, fuck you.”

The committee then showed footage of his deposition before lawmakers, where he refused to answer questions.

“Do you believe the violence on January 6 was justified?” an investigator asks. “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer your question on the basis of the Fifth Amendment,” Stone replies.

The committee then went on to outline Stone’s ties to people who violently attacked the Capitol, including members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, both groups facing seditious conspiracy charges for their role in the insurrection.

Democratic congresswoman Zoe Lofgren has now taken over, and is airing evidence showing how Trump ignored the advice of his advisers to encourage more mail-in voting, and planned well in advance to declare victory even before all the ballots had been counted.

“We now know more about President Trump’s intention for election night. The evidence shows that his false victory speech was planned well in advance before any votes had been counted. It was a premeditated plan by the President to declare victory no matter what the actual result was. He made a plan to stay in office before election day,” Lofgren said.

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that this hearing will be different from previous sessions, in that the committee could vote on how to proceed further:

From its start in June, the January 6 committee has distinguished itself from other congressional proceedings through its tight scripting and lack of votes or back-and-forth between lawmakers. The former has allowed it to clearly present evidence and testimony to a viewing audience, but it seems today could be different.

Liz Cheney, the Republican co-chair of the committee, just made clear what the message of today’s hearing will be: “The central cause of January 6 was one man, Donald Trump, who many others followed.”

“None of this would have happened without him. He was personally and substantially involved in all of it,” Cheney continued. “Today we will focus on President Trump’s state of mind, his intent, his motivations, and how he spurred others to do his bidding. And how another January 6 could happen again, if we do not take necessary action to prevent it.”

Other things Trump was a central cause of: Cheney losing the Republican primary in Wyoming two months ago, ensuring she will not return to Congress next year.

The January 6 committee’s Democratic chair Bennie Thompson has started off the hearing by making the case that its work is not politically motivated, but rather a bipartisan attempt to get to the bottom of a shocking act of violence targeting a pillar of America’s democracy.

“Over the course of these hearings, the evidence has proven that there was a multi-part plan led by former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election,” the Mississippi lawmaker said.

He appealed to the public to view the committee’s work as separate from politics.

“We understood that some people watching those proceedings would wrongly assume that the committee’s investigation was a partisan exercise. That’s why we asked those who was skeptical of our work, to simply to listen, to listen to the evidence, to hear the testimony with an open minded and to let the facts speak for themselves before reaching any judgment,” Thompson said.

He noted that much of the committee’s most revealing testimony has come from former officials in Trump’s Republican administration, campaign workers, or GOP officials at the state level.

“When you look back at what has come out through this committee’s work, the most striking fact is that all this evidence come almost entirely from Republicans,” Thompson said.