ALLENDALE, Mich. — Former President Donald J. Trump is set to be subpoenaed after the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6 riots voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to summon Trump to testify during a public hearing about his role leading up to that insurrection at the Capitol.
The select committee also plans to seek documents directly from the former president.
Political experts do not expect Trump to comply with the subpoena and predict the action will trigger a prolonged court battle.
“If he wants to clear the record, he will have the opportunity to do it,” said Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland).
“We were actually able to nail down every detail and pretty much every element of the offense except for a number of things, what Donald Trump was doing and what he was saying,” added Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi).
Not long after the subpoena announcement, the former president put out a message on his social media platform saying, in part, “Why did they wait until the very end, the final moments, of their last meeting?”
FOX 17 talked with Dr. Donald Zinman, a political science professor at Grand Valley State University, Thursday.
“They are giving him the formal opportunity to present his side of the story,” Dr. Zinman explained. “We have been discussing the committee to some degree, and mainly in the context of talking about oversight.”
Dr. Zinman says there are some potential moves the former president could make next.
“He’ll defy the subpoena and take various measures to run out the clock because the subpoena will simply expire when this session of Congress ends in January,” Dr. Zinman explained. “Like any other citizen who gets a subpoena, they can take the fifth, you know. Trump has that same, that same privilege to honor the subpoena and he can just appear and then take the fifth.”
Subpoenaing a former president isn’t unheard of, but it is rare.
Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford answered the call from committees after their terms in office.
“Certainly, a former president has even less of an argument to make that he enjoys immunity from being subpoenaed,” added Dr. Zinman.
“It’s hard for me to imagine any American citizen of essentially trying to overthrow his or her own government who wouldn’t welcome to come forward and testify,” added Congressman Raskin.
Dr. Zinman did say the subpoena can change if republicans take the House. In that case, he said the subpoena would more than likely end.
Thursday’s hearing was the select committee’s last before November’s midterm elections.
As for the January 6 committee, they’re set to release their final report sometime in December.
