House Capitol Riot Panel Issues New Subpoenas for Witnesses
House Capitol Riot Panel Issues New Subpoenas for Witnesses
(Bloomberg) -- The Democratic-led House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol issued a second round of subpoenas Wednesday seeking evidence from some of those who helped organize a rally that day for supporters of former President Donald Trump.
“The inquiry includes examination of how various individuals and entities coordinated their activities leading up to the events of Jan. 6, Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said in a statement.
The 11 subpoenas focused on a group called Women for America First, which the committee said “organized the Jan. 6th, 2021, rally on the Ellipse, rallies at Freedom Plaza on Nov. 14th and Dec. 12th, 2020, and two ‘March for Trump’ bus tours that generated interest and attendance at the Washington rallies.”
Among those subpoenaed was Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign official, who the committee says was in direct communication with Trump about the rallies. She is instructed in the subpoena to produce documents on Oct. 13 and appear for a deposition on Oct. 28.
Letters to the recipients say the panel is seeking documents and their depositions related to the deadly insurrection, which began as Congress was certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Among those on the committee’s list were Amy Kremer, chair of the WFAF; Kylie Kremer, the group’s executive director; and Maggie Mulvaney, who the committee described as the “VIP lead.”
Amy Kremer spoke at the Ellipse rally. On its website the organization describes its work, saying, “There are millions of women who support the America First Agenda and we’re not standing in the shadows anymore!”
Tim Unes and Justin Caporale, the president and vice president of a Washington-area public relations firm, Event Strategies, also received the summonses, the committee said. “The contact information contained in the permit paperwork included an email affiliated with your company,” Thompson wrote in letters to Caporale and Unes.
Unes, according to the committee, was the rally’s stage manager and Caporale the project manager. Event Strategies did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday night.
The committee’s previous four subpoenas were issued last week to former Trump aides and advisers. Those are former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former White House strategist Steve Bannon, former Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino and Kashyap Patel, a former Defense Department official. The committee has not said if they’ve received official responses.
If they, or any of the new subpoena recipients, refuse to comply to the panel’s subpoenas, lengthy legal battles could be in store.
The committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, had already requested a wide array of information without the use of subpoenas --seeking records and record preservation from a wide range of government agencies, social media, and telecommunications companies.
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