WASHINGTON — Six people allegedly involved in promoting falsified elector slates backing former President Donald Trump were subpoenaed Tuesday to testify to the House committee investigating last year’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Those subpoenaed include former Trump campaign aides Michael Roman and Gary Michael Brown. The others are: Kelli Ward, chair of the Arizona Republican Party; Mark Finchem, an Arizona state House member; Douglas Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator; and former Michigan GOP Chair Laura Cox.
The committee has been focusing on the false claims that Trump and his allies pushed about the election outcome and how that played roles in stoking the violence on Jan. 6, 2021.
All six are ordered under their subpoenas to provide documents to the committee by March 1, and to submit to questioning by the committee from March 8 to March 15.
“The Select Committee is seeking information about efforts to send false slates of electors to Washington and change the outcome of the 2020 election, Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chairs the committee, said in a statement. The committee believes those subpoenaed “have relevant information about the planning and implementation of those plans.”
False elector certificates, which declared Trump the winner of Electoral College votes in seven states Joe Biden actually won — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — were sent to the National Archives by Trump’s allies in mid-December 2020, along with other documents. The New Mexico and Pennsylvania instructions included that the Trump electors should only be counted if there was a disputed election.
The false electors effort, according to committee members, were intended to raise suspicions about state results. The plan was for then-Vice President Mike Pence — using his status on Jan. 6 as the presiding officer over Congress’s certification — to cite doubts to unilaterally reject some key states’ results, sending them back to those states. Pence refused.
The committee last month subpoenaed 14 other people allegedly involved in producing the falsified state elector slates backing Trump; they were all chairpersons and secretaries of the groups’ bogus elector slates from the seven states and all were scheduled to give their testimony this month.
Ward already filed a federal lawsuit with her husband, Michael Ward, last month challenging a committee subpoena seeking phone records from Nov. 1, 2020 to Jan. 31, 2021 for four phone numbers associated with their business, the Arizona Republican reported.
Trump recently stated that Pence could have overturned the election but didn’t exercise that power, prompting Pence to contradict him. “President Trump is wrong,” Pence said.
Separately, state attorneys general in Michigan and New Mexico, both states won by Biden, have asked the Justice Department to investigate the decision by Republican electors to sign statements that claimed to affirm Trump as the winner in those states. Representative Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat, has asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate similar activity in his state.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco has said the Department of Justice is looking into some of these activities.
The committee is looking to hold public hearings as soon as April. So far, it has has most of its work behind closed doors, interviewing more than 500 people and issuing more than 80 subpoenas.
