WASHINGTON — A lawyer involved in former President Donald Trump’s phone call trying to coerce Georgia officials into overturning his loss in that state and an anchor for One America News who helped draft an executive order that would have seized voting machines are among the targets of six new subpoenas Tuesday from the House Jan. 6 committee.
Cleta Mitchell, a prominent lawyer for Republican candidates and causes, participated in Trump’s Jan. 2 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump demanded that his office “find” enough votes for him to win that state, while Christina Bobb, who is also a lawyer, was deeply involved in a number of elements of Trump’s schemes, including a Jan. 6 “war room” at the Willard Hotel near the White House.
Neither responded to HuffPost queries.
They and the other four pro-Trump lawyers who were issued the new subpoenas have been directed to turn over documents in their possession to House investigators by March 15 and to sit for depositions later in the month.
“The select committee is seeking information about attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of electoral votes and any efforts to corruptly change the outcome of the 2020 election,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said in a statement.
Mitchell had for years been a respected lawyer with expertise in election law and campaign finance rules. After the Georgia phone call became public when Raffensperger released an audio recording to The Washington Post, she resigned from the law firm Foley Larder, which had expressed concern about her participation.
That phone call, in which Trump repeated his lies that the election in Georgia was filled with fraud and threatened Raffensperger with possible prosecution should he not do as Trump demanded, sparked an ongoing criminal investigation by the district attorney of Fulton County.
Bobb, meanwhile, was a key player in a number of Trump’s attempts to overturn the election and remain in power. “You were reportedly involved in efforts to draft an executive order for President Trump that would have directed federal agencies to seize voting machines in numerous contested states to collect evidence of purported election fraud,” her subpoena states.
Bobb’s network, OAN, has served as a propaganda organ for Trump for years, and last year was sued by Dominion Voting Systems over its groundless claims that the company had colluded with foreign powers to steal the election from Trump.
The other four subpoenaed are:
- Kenneth Chesebro, a Wisconsin lawyer involved in the plan to send a slate of fake Trump electors to Congress and the National Archives even though Trump had lost that state;
- Katherine Friess, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who also worked on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, including, according to the subpoena, a trip to Michigan to reverse Trump’s loss there;
- Kurt Olson, a Maryland lawyer who, according to his subpoena, spoke to Trump multiple times on the phone on Jan. 6;
- Phillip Kline, the former Kansas attorney general who organized a meeting between Trump and 300 state legislators to spread false claims of voter fraud in an attempt to make then-Vice President Mike Pence delay the Jan. 6 vote certification.
Trump, despite losing the election by 7 million votes nationally and 306-232 in the Electoral College, became the first president in more than two centuries of elections to refuse to hand over power peacefully. His incitement of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — his last-ditch attempt to remain in office ― led to five deaths, including one police officer, injured another 140 officers and led to four police suicides.
He is now under investigation by federal and state officials in multiple jurisdictions.
In addition to the House Jan. 6 committee and Fulton County, Georgia, inquiries, New York State Attorney General Letitia James has been conducting a civil investigation of his family business, while the district attorney in Manhattan has been running a criminal probe.
And the Department of Justice has confirmed that it is investigating at least one element of Trump’s scheme to remain in power: the submission of fake Trump “electors” in seven states that Biden won.
At a Jan. 29 rally, Trump asked his followers to stage “the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere” if prosecutors came after him, “because our country and our elections are corrupt.”
Despite this, Trump remains the dominant figure in the Republican Party and is openly speaking about running for the presidency again in 2024.