Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, during a hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January sixth Attack on the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., US, on Thursday, July 21, 2022.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot on the U.S. Capitol subpoenaed former President Donald Trump Friday, and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said Trump is not going to have the opportunity to show his testimony right into a “circus.”
“The committee treats this matter with great seriousness,” she told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “It might take multiple days, and it’ll be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves.”
The committee voted unanimously on the subpoena and is demanding relevant records and Trump’s testimony under oath next month.
“We recognize that a subpoena to a former president is a major and historic motion,” the panel’s leaders wrote Trump in a letter on Friday. Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Cheney cited what they called Trump’s central role in a deliberate, “multi-part effort” to reverse his loss within the 2020 presidential election.
The subpoena said that Trump could be deposed on Nov. 14, after the midterm elections. It is just not clear whether he’ll comply.
Former White House aide Stephen Bannon was sentenced to 4 months in jail earlier Friday for refusing to comply with subpoenas from the identical committee. He stays free pending appeal.
Cheney said the committee has made it clear what Trump’s obligations are, and that it plans to proceed accordingly.
“This is not going to be his first debate against Joe Biden and the circus and the food fight that that became,” she said. “This can be a far too serious set of issues.”