The House select committee investigating last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol and Donald Trump’s alleged role in it said Monday it’s weighing possible “next steps” in light of the ex-president’s refusal to comply with the proceedings.
The statement from committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) comes the same day Trump failed to appear for a deposition, defying a subpoena the committee issued last month.
“His attorneys have made no attempt to negotiate an appearance of any sort, and his lawsuit parades out many of the same arguments that courts have rejected repeatedly over the last year,” Thompson and Cheney said Monday. “The truth is that Donald Trump, like several of his closest allies, is hiding from the Select Committee’s investigation and refusing to do what more than a thousand other witnesses have done.”
The former president, they continued, “orchestrated a scheme to overturn a presidential election and block the transfer of power. He is obligated to provide answers to the American people.”
Trump, who has dismissed the committee’s investigation into the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot as a “witch hunt,” filed a lawsuit last week seeking to block the subpoena on the grounds that “long-held precedent and practice” have established that Congress can’t compel a former president to testify.
Now, Thompson and Cheney said, the committee is planning its next move.
“In the days ahead, the committee will evaluate next steps in the litigation and regarding the former President’s noncompliance,” they said in their statement Monday.
According to his lawsuit, Trump is also refusing to submit many of the documents subpoenaed by the committee, including records of any communications he had the day his supporters carried out the attack on the Capitol as Congress met to certify the Electoral College count in the 2020 presidential election.