While the former president has suggested he might testify live before the committee, it was far more likely that the demand would lead to a legal fight.
WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack issued a subpoena on Friday to Donald J. Trump, paving the way for a potentially historic court fight over whether Congress can compel testimony from a former president.
The subpoena was the most aggressive step taken so far in what was already one of the most consequential congressional investigations in decades.
It came as the Justice Department conducts a separate criminal inquiry into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and weeks before the midterm congressional elections, and was likely to thrust Mr. Trump and the Jan. 6 committee into a legal battle that could ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
In a wide-ranging, four-page document issued alongside the subpoena, the panel directed Mr. Trump to produce an extensive list of documents and communications — including phone calls, texts, encrypted messages and email — related to nearly every aspect of his effort to invalidate the 2020 election between the dates of Nov. 3, 2020, and Jan. 6, 2021.
It asked for material on the former president’s bid to create false slates of pro-Trump electors in states he lost, his connections to the militia groups that attended the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, any attempts to delay or disrupt the electoral count by Congress on that day, and his interactions with members of Congress.
“As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multipart effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, the leaders of the committee, wrote to Mr. Trump Friday.
They said the panel’s request was “narrowly focused” on information that the former president was “uniquely positioned to provide.”
The committee cited numerous examples of former presidents, including John Quincy Adams and Gerald R. Ford, who testified before Congress after they left office. But the Supreme Court has never decided a case in which a former president refused to comply with a congressional subpoena, and the panel made no mention of cases where presidents have resisted legislative inquiries.
Ms. Cheney, the committee’s vice chairwoman, said this week that if Mr. Trump refused to comply, members of the panel would “take the steps we need to take.”
But it was unclear what the committee could do, particularly if Republicans win control of the House in next month’s elections. In that case, G.O.P. leaders, who fought the formation of the inquiry, boycotted it and have denounced it at every turn, would be all but certain to allow the panel to dissolve, as it is scheduled to do at the close of the current Congress in January.
The subpoena to Mr. Trump requires him to turn over documents by Nov. 4 and to appear for a deposition under oath on or about Nov. 14 that it says could last several days.
The panel asked the former president to inform the committee “promptly” if he intended to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
In a statement on Friday evening, a lawyer for Mr. Trump said his firm would review the subpoena and criticized the panel for its handling of what he called an “unprecedented action.”
“We understand that, once again, flouting norms and appropriate and customary process, the committee has publicly released a copy of its subpoena,” the lawyer, David A. Warrington, said.
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Mr. Trump last week released a lengthy, rambling letter that attacked the committee’s work and reiterated false claims of widespread voting fraud, but did not address whether he would comply with the subpoena.
The former president has indicated privately to aides that he would be willing to testify to the House panel, but only if he could do so live, according to a person close to him. Committee and staff members have suggested that they are open to the idea, believing the panel could elicit some significant disclosures from the former president.
But the timing of the subpoena, which comes little more than two months before the committee shuts down and just as it is meant to be producing a voluminous report laying out its findings, raised questions about what the panel expected to get out of Mr. Trump.
Committee members have said they wanted to build up as much evidence as possible about the former president’s actions before attempting to question him. But the chances of securing his testimony remain slim. Legal experts doubted that any lawyer representing the former president would allow him to testify, for fear that he would perjure himself and place himself in legal jeopardy.
Mr. Trump has a penchant for stating falsehoods, and it is a federal felony to do so before Congress. It was revealed by a federal judge on Wednesday that the former president had signed a document swearing under oath that information in a Georgia lawsuit he filed challenging the results of the 2020 election was true, even though his own legal team made him aware it was false.
There are risks for the committee as well. Mr. Trump’s letter last week was the latest reminder that he would be likely to use any unfettered opportunity for live, public testimony to continue to perpetuate the same lies about the 2020 election that fueled the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021; and there is no guarantee that he would answer any substantive questions.
Despite repeatedly claiming in public that he would, Mr. Trump did not testify during either of his two impeachment trials, nor did he sit down with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who was investigating whether he obstructed justice and his campaign’s ties to Russia. Mr. Trump ultimately provided Mr. Mueller with written answers in response to questions.
After interviewing more than 1,000 witnesses and obtaining millions of pages of documents, the Jan. 6 committee built a sweeping case placing Mr. Trump at the center of a calculated effort to overturn the vote that began even before Election Day. At a hearing last week to sum up its work, the panel voted unanimously to issue a subpoena to Mr. Trump, and staff members worked for several days preparing the demand.
Mr. Trump and his allies are the focus of several criminal investigations, including into the events that led to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The Justice Department is conducting its own sprawling inquiry into the roles Mr. Trump and some of his allies played in seeking to subvert the 2020 election. In addition, Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney, has been leading a wide-ranging criminal investigation into the efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia.
In an apparent effort to investigate witness interference, the subpoena from the House committee seeks any communications Mr. Trump had with potential witnesses before the committee and with the Secret Service.
The panel specifically sought any communications with 13 allies of Mr. Trump who played key roles in the effort to overturn the election, including Roger Stone Jr., Stephen K. Bannon, Michael T. Flynn, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Boris Epshteyn, Christina Bobb, Cleta Mitchell and Patrick Byrne.
The committee has at times acted aggressively to enforce its subpoenas. The House has voted four times to hold in contempt of Congress allies of Mr. Trump who refused to testify or supply documents. Two of those allies — Mr. Bannon, an outside adviser who briefly worked in the Trump White House, and Peter Navarro, the former White House trade adviser — were indicted. The Justice Department declined to charge two others: Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, and Dan Scavino Jr., another top aide.
Mr. Bannon has been convicted and was sentenced on Friday to four months in jail and a fine of $6,500. Mr. Navarro’s trial is scheduled for next month.
Former presidents have responded in a variety of ways to requests — or demands — from Congress.
Several voluntarily testified before Congress, including Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Harry S. Truman and Gerald R. Ford.
At least three former presidents have been issued congressional subpoenas. In 1846, John Tyler testified, and John Quincy Adams submitted a deposition. But in 1953, Mr. Truman refused to comply with a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee, claiming that it would violate the separation of powers and citing precedents from George Washington and other presidents who also refused to provide Congress with certain documents.
But he later reached a different conclusion and testified before Congress multiple times after leaving office.
In 1998, Bill Clinton was issued a subpoena — though by an independent counsel, not a congressional committee — during the investigation into whether he had made false statements under oath about his extramarital affairs. Prosecutors agreed to drop the subpoena after Mr. Clinton agreed to an interview.
Luke Broadwater reported from Washington, and Michael S. Schmidt from New York. Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from Chicago.
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