By Aaron Miller-
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack has issued new subpoenas to lawyers for Donald Trump suspected to be involved in efforts to stop the The certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
The subpoenas targeted documents and testimony from Cleta Mitchell, Kurt Olsen, Katherine Freiss, Phillip Kline, Trump campaign attorney Kenneth Chesebro, Washington lobbyist , the pro Trump One America News host Christina Bobb , and attorney Katherine Friess, Kurt Olsen, a private attorney who contacted Department of Justice officials on Trump’s behalf; and Phillip Kline, the former attorney general of Kansas.
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The panel accused the six targets of pushing conspiracy theories about election fraud, promoting efforts aimed at sabotaging the election results, and possessing important insider information relevant to the committee’s investigation.
It claims Bobb, a reporter for OANN who helped raise funds for the controversial Maricopa County, Arizona, 2020 election audit while covering it, and Friess, both helped draft an executive order to seize voting machines and that Kline helped establish a meeting between former President Donald Trump and more than 300 state legislators about false claims of voter fraud.
The committee also accused Chesebro of bolstering efforts in the Trump campaign to support fake electors in places Trump lost. Olsen was accused of helping draft an executive order calling on the Justice Department to “take voter action.”
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The House select committee had only last week been discussing the possibility of issuing a subpoena to Ivanka Trump to force her cooperation with the inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to return himself to power on 6 January, in a dramatic move to force a member of Trump’s family to testify against him.
The idea has neither been implemented nor abandoned, but the focus on lawyers for the former president has taken off as prosecutors continue to march forward on their mission.
“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,” said Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the panel.
“The six individuals we’ve subpoenaed today all have knowledge related to those matters and will help the select committee better understand all the various strategies employed to potentially affect the outcome of the election,” Thompson said.
The subpoenas reflect the panel’s focus on Trump’s schemes to stop Biden’s certification from taking place, so that the former president’s associates could buy time to co-opt state legislatures to send Trump slates of electors to return him to office.
The Trump operatives involved in the Willard operation included Bobb, who joined the legal team at the hotel led by Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani and another Trump lawyer, John Eastman.
The select committee said they subpoenaed Bobb as she was also involved in drawing up a draft executive order that would have directed federal agencies to seize voting machines in states Biden narrowly won over Trump on the basis of claims of election fraud.
Mitchell was subpoenaed due to contacts she made with GOP lawmakers and her participation in the infamous phone call when Trump pressured Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensberger to “find” votes to reverse his loss in the state.
The select committee also ordered documents and testimony from Freiss, a Trump lawyer who the panel said played a role in drawing up the draft executive order to seize voting machines.
Olsen is accused of pressuring the justice department to open an investigation into election fraud, according to an interim Senate judiciary committee report released last year.
Olsen also allegedly helped to draw up a draft executive order for Trump that would have directed the justice department to “take voter action” and, citing documents on file with the panel, had multiple calls with Trump on 6 January, the select committee said.
Kline convened a meeting with 300 state legislators in an attempt to encourage them to sign a letter urging Mike Pence, then the vice-president, to delay the certification.
Chesebro actively promoted legal theories within the Trump campaign supporting the use of slates of bogus electors in states the former president lost, the select committee chairman said in his subpoena letter.
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