2021 July 2021 •
July 27: The committee held its first public hearing, featuring testimony from four police officers who were in the front line as rioters attacked the Capitol. •
Daniel Hodges, a
Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia officer, said he was crushed in a doorway between rioters and a police line. •
Michael Fanone, a Metropolitan Police Department officer, said rioters pulled him into the crowd, beat him with a flagpole, stole his badge, repeatedly tased him with his taser and went for his gun. He criticized those who downplayed the attack. •
August 25: The committee sought records of at least 30 members of Trump's inner circle from seven government agencies and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which preserves White House communication records. The committee's letter explained it was repeating requests that "multiple committees of the House of Representatives" had made on March 25, 2021. (Several weeks later, it was revealed that they specifically sought records from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and some Republican members of Congress.) •
August 27: The committee demanded records from 15
social media companies going back to the spring of 2020.
September 2021 The committee sought to identify whether the White House was involved in planning the Capitol attack and whether Trump personally had advance knowledge of it. The committee considered issuing subpoenas for call records or testimony of senior Trump administration officials including Meadows, Deputy Chief of Staff
Dan Scavino and former Trump campaign manager
Brad Parscale. •
September 23: The committee issued subpoenas to Meadows, Scavino, chief strategist
Steve Bannon, and Pentagon official and former
Devin Nunes aide
Kash Patel. Documents were demanded by October 7. Bannon and Patel were instructed to testify on October 14, and Meadows and Scavino on October 15. Trump and his attorneys instructed the four aides (as was reported two weeks later) to defy the orders and provide neither documents nor testimony. Among these eleven people was
Katrina Pierson, national spokesperson for Trump's 2016 campaign.
October 2021 •
October 7: As the committee issued further subpoenas to Stop the Steal LLC, Stop the Steal campaign organizer
Ali Alexander, and fellow rally organizer Nathan Martin, Trump announced he would assert executive privilege to withhold the documents the committee had requested in August. •
October 8: • White House Press Secretary
Jen Psaki says Biden would not honor Trump's request to assert executive privilege to stop NARA from providing these documents. Nevertheless, Trump writes NARA asserting privilege over about forty documents. • A lawyer for Bannon says in a letter to the committee that Bannon would not comply with the subpoena for his testimony, because Trump had asserted executive privilege and instructed him to defy the subpoena. •
October 13: The committee subpoenas
Jeffrey Clark and schedules him to provide documents and testimony later in the month. As assistant attorney general, Clark angled for a promotion to attorney general by promising Trump he would help overturn the election results. Former acting attorney general
Jeffrey Rosen, who resisted Clark's efforts to interfere with the election outcome, is interviewed by the committee. •
October 14: After Bannon does not appear for his scheduled deposition, the committee says it would initiate proceedings to hold Bannon in criminal contempt. The committee also announces that Patel and Meadows were "engaging" with their investigation, and postpones both their depositions scheduled for October 14 and 15 respectively. and he did not formally receive the subpoena until October 8. •
October 18: Trump sues to prevent NARA from turning over the records to the committee or at least to allow him "to conduct a full privilege review of all of the requested materials" so he can choose which records NARA provides. His lawsuit, submitted by attorney Jesse R. Binnall, complains that the records request is "illegal, unfounded, and overbroad" and amounts to a "fishing expedition". Meanwhile, NARA plans to release the documents on November 12. •
October 19: The committee votes unanimously to adopt a contempt of Congress report against Bannon and refer it to the full House for a vote. •
October 21: All 220 House Democrats and 9 House Republicans vote to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress, referring his case to the DOJ, which will decide whether to prosecute him. •
October 22: CNN reports that Cheney and Kinzinger have interviewed former Trump
director of strategic communications Alyssa Farah. She had resigned in December 2020 and told CNN after the January 6 attack that Trump had lied to the American people about the election results. •
October 25: Biden once again says he would not assert executive privilege; this regarded a second batch of documents the committee had requested from NARA. •
October 26: The
Washington Post reports that more people are expected to be subpoenaed, including legal scholar John Eastman, who supported Trump's claims about the 2020 election. •
October 29: Jeffrey Clark, having parted ways with his attorney several days previously, does not appear for his scheduled deposition.
November 2021 •
November 5: Jeffrey Clark and his new attorney meet with investigators to state Clark would not cooperate unless compelled by a court order, asserting that Trump's "confidences are not his to waive", citing
attorney-client privilege. In a letter to the committee, Clark's attorney cites a letter from a Trump attorney specifically stating Trump would not try to block Clark's testimony. •
November 8: The committee subpoenaed
Bill Stepien;
Jason Miller;
Michael Flynn;
John Eastman; Angela McCallum; and
Bernard Kerik, at least some of whom were suspected to have been connected to the "war room" operation at the Willard Hotel. All were required to provide documents by November 23 and scheduled to testify under oath through December. All were required to provide documents by November 23 and scheduled to testify under oath through December. • Federal judge
Tanya Chutkan denies Trump's October 18 request to stop NARA from releasing documents. Trump's claim "that he may override the express will of the executive branch", she wrote in a 39-page ruling, "appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power 'exists in perpetuity'. But Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President." (The previous evening, Trump had filed an emergency request for a preemptive
injunction against Chutkan's forthcoming decision, but Chutkan rejected it two hours later as legally defective and premature.) Trump immediately asks Chutkan for an injunction, which she denies. However, the
DC Circuit Court of Appeals grants Trump's request for an injunction on November 11 and schedules oral arguments before a three-judge panel for November 30. •
November 12: • Meadows does not appear for his testimony. • Bannon is federally indicted on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress. •
November 15: Bannon surrenders to the FBI. •
November 22: Subpoenas are issued for
InfoWars host
Alex Jones and longtime Republican operative Roger Stone, as well as two Stop the Steal organizers, Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence, and Trump spokesman and
Save America PAC communications director
Taylor Budowich. Warrants for
Proud Boys and
Oath Keepers, and their respective leaders
Enrique Tarrio and
Stewart Rhodes, are issued the following day. Robert Patrick Lewis, chairman of 1st Amendment Praetorian, a group alleged to have provided security at several rallies before January 6, is also subpoenaed that day. •
November 24: In advance of the hearing scheduled for November 30 regarding the release of NARA records, Trump's attorneys submit a reply brief. They claim that Biden's willingness to release the records served his "own political advantage" and "will result in permanent damage to the institution of the presidency". •
November 30: Trump's lawyers asked the judges on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to review each document and decide whether to release each one to Congress. The three judges denied this request. Judge
Patricia Millett said the dispute was not about the content of these specific documents but rather the principle of "what happens when the current incumbent president" (in this case, Biden) says he will not interfere with an information exchange between NARA and Congress. (The court went on to rule against Trump on December 9; Trump went on to appeal to the Supreme Court on December 23; and the Supreme Court denied his request on January 19, 2022.)
December 2021 •
December 1: • The committee voted unanimously to hold Jeffrey Clark in contempt of Congress. Clark had said he planned to invoke the Fifth Amendment, which protects people from being forced to self-incriminate. (He was given a new deposition date of December 4, but due to his report of a "medical condition", the deposition was postponed; he eventually appeared on February 2, 2022, but did not answer substantive questions. •
December 7: Mark Meadows's attorney said he would cease cooperating. Meadows had already provided 2,300 text messages, including those sent during the riot in which he informed others what Trump was doing, and some 6,800 pages of emails. Among the documents was a January 5 38-page PowerPoint presentation entitled "Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN" to be provided "on the hill"; a November 6 text exchange with a member of Congress in which Meadows reportedly said "I love it" in a discussion about the
fake electors scheme; and a November 7 email discussing that scheme as part of a "direct and collateral attack". Meadows objected to the committee's subpoena of telecom carriers for the call and text
metadata of more than 100 people, including himself and others in Trump's inner circle. NARA said it was working with Meadows' lawyers to obtain more documents from him. • The three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected Trump's appeal to have his White House records withheld from the committee. However, NARA was not permitted to deliver the records to Congress for another two weeks to allow Trump sufficient time to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. •
December 10:
The Guardian reported that Meadows had turned over a 38-page PowerPoint presentation entitled "Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN" to the committee as well as the email referring to the presentation. It recommended that Trump declare a national security emergency to delay the January 6 certification of electors, reject all ballots cast by machine, and have paper ballots secured by U.S. marshals and National Guard troops to conduct a recount. (The newspaper also saw a 36-page version that was not substantially different.) Meadows's attorney said the PowerPoint presentation had arrived in Meadows's email inbox and that Meadows did not act on it. This presentation (as was reported the next day) detailed an elaborate theory that China and Venezuela had taken control of voting machines, and it had been distributed by Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel who specialized in
psychological operations during his career. Waldron said he had spoken to Meadows "maybe eight to 10 times", had attended a November 25 Oval Office meeting with Trump and others, and had briefed several members of Congress on the presentation. Waldron was a Trump campaign associate who made false assertions of election fraud as an expert witness during hearings alongside Rudy Giuliani in Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan. •
December 12: The committee released a report revealing that Meadows had sent an email on January 5 promising that the National Guard would "protect pro Trump people". The report also included what the committee said were an email and text messages to members of Congress discussing how Trump might persuade legislators of some states to change their certified elector slates from Biden to Trump, writing Trump "thinks the legislators have the power, but the VP has power too". Meadows asked the members how Trump could contact such legislators, which the president did via a conference call with 300 of them on January 2, providing them purported evidence of fraud they might use to decertify their election results. Three days later, dozens of legislators from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin wrote Pence asking him to postpone the January 6 certification of electors for ten days "affording our respective bodies to meet, investigate, and as a body vote on certification or decertification of the election". •
December 13: Before the committee voted unanimously to recommend a contempt of Congress charge against Meadows to the full House, Cheney read aloud some text messages Meadows received on and around January 6 that revealed the perspectives of Trump allies at that time. Cheney suggested that Trump may have committed a felony by
corruptly obstructing the electoral certification proceedings. •
December 14: The House voted 222–208 to find Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress and to refer the matter to the Justice Department. The only two Republicans to join Democrats in the vote against Meadows were Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both of whom serve on the committee. Prior to the vote, more text messages to Meadows were presented on the House floor, including one sent on the day after the election that proposed a strategy to send electors selected by Republican-controlled legislatures in three states directly to the Supreme Court before voting results had been determined in those states. CNN later reported that the committee believed the text came from Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and secretary of energy during the Trump administration. Though a Perry spokesman denied Perry sent the text, CNN had evidence that it came from Perry's phone. Committee member
Jamie Raskin acknowledged that the text's author had been initially misidentified as a lawmaker. •
December 16: The White House counsel's office agreed in writing to delay their pursuit of NARA's release of some documents. Although Biden rejected Trump's claim of executive privilege, the White House nevertheless had its own concerns about the records request and said it should be narrowed so as not to expose highly classified or irrelevant information. The committee on December 16 also moved to subpoena Waldron, the purported author of the PowerPoint presentation turned over by Meadows. •
December 17: Roger Stone appeared before the committee for less than an hour and asserted his Fifth Amendment rights to refuse to answer questions. Through his legal team, he claimed he was avoiding the "elaborate trap" of the committee's "loaded questions". •
December 20: Committee chair Thompson wrote to Representative
Scott Perry asking him to provide information about his involvement in the effort to install Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general. Thompson believed Perry had been involved in the effort to install Clark, given witness testimony from former acting attorney general
Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy
Richard Donoghue, as well as communications between Perry and Meadows. Perry declined the request the next day. Among the text messages to Meadows the committee released on December 14 was one attributed to a "member of Congress" dated January 5 that read "Please check your signal", a reference to the encrypted messaging system
Signal. In his letter to Perry, Thompson mentioned evidence that Perry had communicated with Meadows using Signal, though Perry denied sending that particular message. •
December 22: Thompson wrote a letter to congressman Jim Jordan requesting a meeting to discuss his communications with Trump and possibly his associates on and around January 6. •
December 23: •
The Washington Post reported that the committee was considering a recommendation to the Department of Justice of opening a possible criminal investigation into Trump for his activities on January 6. (The court would eventually reject Trump's emergency request a month later, which allowed the committee to receive the records, and it would also decline to hear his case a month after that.) •
December 24: While suing to block a subpoena of his bank records from JP Morgan, current Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said in a court filing that he had cooperated extensively with the committee by providing 1,700 pages of documents and about four hours of sworn testimony relating to the planning and financing of Trump's speech outside the White House on January 6. The subpoena of JP Morgan had not been public knowledge until Budowich's lawsuit revealed it. It is the first time this committee has been known to subpoena a bank directly. •
December 29: Trump's attorney complained to the Supreme Court that, if the committee's work had any "legislative purpose", it was merely a pretext for "what is essentially a law enforcement investigation". This would invalidate the investigation, according to Trump's lawyers, since the congressional mandate requires a legislative purpose. Trump's attorney cited Thompson's recent acknowledgment that the committee could make a criminal referral.
2022 January 2022 •
January 5: Former Trump White House aide
Stephanie Grisham testified to the committee. She reportedly said that Trump held secret meetings in the White House residence in the weeks before the Capitol attack and that the Secret Service had received a presidential document reflecting Trump's intentions to march to the Capitol on January 6. •
January 8:
The Guardian reported the committee was examining whether Trump had overseen a
criminal conspiracy that connected efforts to block Biden's election certification with the Capitol attack. •
January 9: Representative Jim Jordan declined the committee's December 22 request for an interview. •
January 10: An article in
Politico drew renewed attention to the
fake electors scheme in which unauthorized individuals had forged
certificates of ascertainment claiming that Trump won their state's electoral votes. These unauthorized individuals had sent the false documents to NARA; NARA had rejected them. The committee was reportedly interviewing state officials, especially in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, to retrace Trump's efforts to subvert the election at the state level. •
January 12: • The committee asked Republican House minority leader
Kevin McCarthy to voluntarily provide information. In a letter to McCarthy, the committee summarized its knowledge of McCarthy's positions and actions, and it asked McCarthy if he'd discussed his own shifts in tone with Trump or his aides, especially considering any investigations. McCarthy said hours later he would not cooperate. • CNN reported the committee was investigating fraudulent certificates of ascertainment created by Trump allies in seven states in late December 2020. The documents had been published by the watchdog group
American Oversight in March 2021 but received little attention until January 2022. Michigan attorney general
Dana Nessel announced on January 14 that after a months-long investigation she had asked the
U.S. Justice Department to open a criminal investigation. Deputy attorney general
Lisa Monaco confirmed several days later that the department was reviewing the matter. •
January 19: The Supreme Court ruled that NARA could release the Trump White House documents to the committee. It did not provide a reason, stating simply that it "denied" Trump's request. However, it did make a comment: As the Court of Appeals had acknowledged it would have denied Trump's request even had he still been in office, anything the Court of Appeals said about "Trump's status as a former President" was legally "nonbinding". The votes of the justices were not disclosed, except for the dissent of Justice
Clarence Thomas. (Thomas's wife, Ginni Thomas, had attended the January 6 rally, which was not reported until two months after the Supreme Court's decision.) •
January 20: • The committee asked
Ivanka Trump for a voluntary interview. (She was interviewed, ultimately, on April 5.) • John Eastman sued the committee. The case is
Eastman v. Thompson in the
Southern Division of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. • In the evening, the committee received the documents from NARA that they had been seeking since August. Barr had been a staunch ally of Trump until his December 1, 2020, announcement that the Justice Department had not found evidence of significant election irregularities. Trump was angered by the finding and announced Barr's resignation on Twitter two weeks later. •
January 24: • In an effort to withhold 19,000 emails subpoenaed by the committee, an attorney for John Eastman told a federal judge that they were protected by attorney-client privilege because Eastman had been representing Trump while participating in the January 2 conference call with legislators; the January 3 Oval Office meeting with Trump and Pence; and while working at the Willard Hotel. Eastman had not previously asserted privilege. The emails were stored on servers at Eastman's former employer, Chapman University, which had been subpoenaed and did not object to their release. The judge ordered the emails released to Eastman's legal team to identify which they asserted were privileged, before allowing a third party to scrutinize them. • The committee subpoenaed the telephone records of
Arizona Republican Party chair
Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael Ward. Both Wards were "alternate electors" who signed the false Arizona certificate of ascertainment. Kelli Ward was among the most prominent of Republican officials who worked with Trump to stoke claims of election fraud and later was involved in sending the false certificates to Congress. •
January 26: Marc Short, who had been Pence's chief of staff, was interviewed by the committee. They asked him about a conversation on January 5, 2021, in which he predicted that Trump would very soon publicly turn against Pence, likely posing a security risk to Pence. Short had spoken to Pence's lead Secret Service agent on that day to advise him of the risk. •
January 28: • The committee subpoenaed fourteen Republicans in seven states who falsely asserted they were the chairperson and secretary on slates of Trump electors presented on bogus certificates of ascertainment. •
January 31:
The New York Times reported there were two executive orders drafted in mid-December to allow Trump to order the seizure of voting machines, predicated on baseless allegations of foreign tampering advanced by Waldron, Flynn and Powell. One document ordered the Defense Department to seize the machines, while the other called for the
Department of Homeland Security to conduct the seizures. Giuliani persuaded Trump to avoid the former, but at Trump's direction he asked
Ken Cuccinelli, the second in command at DHS, if seizures were possible; Cuccinelli responded DHS did not have the authority. Trump had also suggested to attorney general
Bill Barr in November that the Justice Department could conduct the seizures, which Barr quickly said the department would not do.
The Times reported the next day that the committee was scrutinizing Trump's involvement.
February 2022 •
February 1: • NARA notified Trump that it planned to deliver some of Pence's records to the committee on March 3. • Kelli and Michael Ward filed suit to preclude their telephone carrier from releasing the records on February 4, asserting that as practicing physicians their confidential communications with patients would be compromised. •
February 15: Biden rejected Trump's claim of executive privilege over the
White House visitor logs for dates including January 6, 2021. NARA had provided these visitor logs to the Biden White House for review. The day after Biden's approval, NARA notified Trump that they would deliver the visitor logs to the committee on March 3. •
February 22: The Supreme Court declined to hear Trump's challenge to the release of the NARA records. The records had already been delivered to the committee on January 20 after the court denied Trump's emergency request. The Supreme Court was now saying it would not hear Trump's case at all. It did not disclose its reasoning or decision process. •
February 25:
Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.'s then-fiancée, appeared for a voluntary interview but abruptly left her video deposition when she realized committee members were present. Her lawyer subsequently complained that someone had leaked the news of the interview to the press. •
March 2: The committee stated in a federal court filing for
Eastman v. Thompson that the evidence it had acquired "provides, at minimum, a good-faith basis for concluding" Trump and his campaign violated multiple laws in a criminal
conspiracy to defraud the United States by attempting to prevent Congress from certifying his defeat. The filing in the
District Court for the Central District of California challenged Eastman's court efforts to shield his emails from the committee, as he asserted attorney-client privilege. It contained a January 6, 2021, email exchange in which Pence's chief counsel
Greg Jacob rebuked Eastman for proposing that Pence stop the vote certification. Jacob said that, "as a legal framework, it is a results-oriented position that you would never support if attempted by the opposition, and essentially entirely made up." •
March 3: Kimberly Guilfoyle was subpoenaed. The committee believed she was active in fundraising for the rallies preceding the attack and was in the Oval Office that day. •
March 4: Rudy Giuliani's attorneys suggested that he may not comply with his subpoena, given the committee's treatment of Eastman. Giuliani has asserted attorney-client privilege, the type of privilege that the committee asked a judge on March 2 to waive for Eastman. •
March 9: • The RNC sued to block the committee's subpoena of
customer relationship management software company
Salesforce. Through the subpoena, the committee had sought information about
Republican National Committee fundraising. (The RNC lost the lawsuit on May 1.) • A federal judge said he would review 111 of John Eastman's emails from January 4–7, 2021 to determine whether they are protected by attorney-client or attorney work-product privilege. •
March 28: • The committee voted unanimously to hold Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro in contempt for refusing to testify. The next step would be for the full House to vote. Carter also wrote, referring to Kenneth Chesebro's December 13, 2020, email to Rudy Giuliani and others: "President Trump's team transformed a legal interpretation of the Electoral Count Act into a day-by-day plan of action. The draft memo pushed a strategy that knowingly violated the Electoral Count Act". Chesebro's email was later found to have included a proposal for Pence to recuse himself; Chesebro argued that vice presidents have a conflict of interest if they have just run for reelection, and he suggested that instead
Chuck Grassley or another senior senate Republican should certify the election results. In this strategy, when the senator opened the Arizona envelopes and found two conflicting elector slates, he would halt the certification and suggest possible remedies such as allowing the Republican-controlled state legislature to appoint electors. Grassley told
Roll Call on January 5 that "We don't expect [Pence] to be there", though Grassley's office quickly walked back the statement and said neither he nor his staff had been aware of the proposal. •
March 29: Committee chair Thompson called it "concerning" that no record of phone calls made by President Trump from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. on January 6 had been found in eleven pages of records turned over to the committee. The committee was investigating whether it had received the complete phone log and whether Trump had used other phones. •
March 31:
Jared Kushner voluntarily spoke to the committee for six hours. He was the first Trump family member to be interviewed.
April 2022 •
April 5: Ivanka Trump voluntarily spoke to the committee for eight hours. •
April 8: •
The Guardian reported the committee had found evidence the Capitol attack included a coordinated assault by the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, as well as possible coordination with Save America rally organizers. • CNN reported that documents the committee obtained included a text message
Donald Trump Jr. sent to Meadows two days after the election. The text outlined paths to subvert the Electoral College process and ensure his father a second term. Trump Jr. wrote, "It's very simple. We have multiple paths. We control them all. We have operational control. Total leverage. Moral high ground. POTUS must start second term now." He continued, "Republicans control 28 states Democrats 22 states. Once again Trump wins", adding, "We either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January 2021." Biden had not yet been declared the winner at the time of the text. •
April 10:
The New York Times reported that committee members were divided on whether to make a criminal referral to the DOJ, though they agreed they had sufficient evidence. Vice chair
Liz Cheney said there had been "a massive and well-organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election" and that it was "absolutely clear" that Trump and his allies "knew it was unlawful". •
April 13: • Former White House counsel
Pat A. Cipollone and his deputy
Patrick F. Philbin met with the committee after Trump gave them permission. • NARA archivist David S. Ferriero gave Trump advance notice that he planned to turn over more documents to the committee on April 28. •
April 15: CNN published text messages the committee had obtained from Mark Meadows, focused on his communications with Senator
Mike Lee and Representative
Chip Roy, both of whom had backed off their initial support of Trump's efforts to challenge the election. Lee had grown disillusioned with Sidney Powell's wild claims, and when no state legislatures convened to pursue Eastman's fake electors scheme, Lee had voted to approve the official electoral results. He then criticized senators
Ted Cruz and
Josh Hawley for their continued
election denial. •
April 18: A court filing by Eastman indicated that he was still trying to withhold 37,000 pages of emails. Federal judge David Carter will again consider his request. •
April 20: The Justice Department wrote to the committee with a broad request for transcripts of witness interviews "and of any additional interviews you conduct in the future", acknowledging that they could be used "as evidence in potential criminal cases, to pursue new leads or as a baseline for new interviews conducted by federal law enforcement officials".
Kenneth Polite, assistant attorney general for the criminal division, and
Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote the committee's lead investigator
Timothy Heaphy, advising him that the transcripts "may contain information relevant to a criminal investigation we are conducting". •
May 2: The committee requested voluntary interviews with Representatives
Mo Brooks of Alabama,
Andy Biggs of Arizona, and
Ronny Jackson of Texas. All three declined. •
May 6: Rudy Giuliani, scheduled to testify on this day, backed out after requesting and being denied the right to record his testimony. •
May 12: The committee issued subpoenas to House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and Republican congressmen Jim Jordan, Mo Brooks, Scott Perry and Andy Biggs. The subpoenaing of House members by a committee had no modern precedent, apart from those of the
House Ethics Committee. Unlike other subpoenas issued by the committee, the scope and contents of these were not disclosed, including whether documents or communications records were demanded. •
May 17: The
New York Times reported the committee was negotiating with the Justice Department to exchange the witness interview transcripts for information the DOJ has. This was also the first news report about the April 20 request. (The committee later publicly identified the man who photographed hallways and staircases in the Capitol complex as Trevor Hallgren, who had traveled to Washington with Danny Hamilton. On January 6, Hamilton carried a flag with a sharpened tip that he suggested was a weapon intended for a specific target, while Hallgren named Democratic politicians and said: "We’re coming for you... We’re coming to take you out.") In Loudermilk's same-day reply, he said he gave a tour to a family with young children. He denied that it was "a suspicious group or 'reconnaissance tour, and he did not indicate whether he intended to cooperate with the committee. • Former attorney general Bill Barr was reportedly in active negotiations to provide sworn testimony and formal transcribed testimony. •
May 20: Giuliani spoke with the committee for more than nine hours.
June 2022 •
June 2: Bill Barr gave in-person testimony behind closed doors for two hours. •
June 3: The FBI arrested Peter Navarro, who had been indicted by a grand jury the previous day for contempt of Congress. that the DOJ had decided not to prosecute Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino, both of whom Congress had also held in contempt months earlier. •
June 7: Judge David Carter ruled that Eastman must disclose an additional 159 sensitive documents to the committee. Ten documents related to three December 2020 meetings by a secretive group, including someone whom Carter characterized as a "high-profile" leader, strategizing about how to overturn the election. Carter decided that one email in particular contained likely evidence of a crime, and he ordered it disclosed under the
crime-fraud exception of attorney-client privilege. It contained a warning by an unidentified attorney that the Trump legal team should not go to court over the upcoming Congressional session to certify the Electoral College vote count, since litigating might "tank the January 6 strategy". •
June 9: First public hearing. New footage of the attack was shown, and the first witnesses testified publicly. It was revealed that Representative Scott Perry had requested a pardon at the end of the Trump administration. •
June 12: Committee members
Adam Schiff and
Jamie Raskin told reporters there was enough evidence to recommend that the Justice Department indict President Donald Trump. •
June 13: Second public hearing. The committee presented testimony that Trump knew he lost the 2020 election yet promoted the false narrative to exploit donors, raking in "half a billion" dollars. •
June 15: • The committee released video of Representative Barry Loudermilk leading 15 people through the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021, the day before the insurrection. One unnamed man was seen photographing Capitol passageways such as staircases. In a separate video taken the next day during the insurrection, the same man stood outside the Capitol building and screamed threats about Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others. On May 19, when the committee had requested a voluntary interview with Loudermilk about the matter, he wrote a statement claiming he had given a tour to "a constituent family with young children" on January 5 who "did not enter the Capitol grounds on the 6th". On June 15, Loudermilk again denied responsibility, but this time he omitted the denial of their presence at the Capitol on January 6. •
The New York Times reported on an email exchange dated December 24, 2020, that the committee had obtained, between Eastman, attorney Kenneth Chesebro and Trump campaign officials. Eastman wrote he was aware of a "heated fight" within the Supreme Court about whether to hear a case, and participants in the email exchange discussed whether to file a Wisconsin case that four justices would agree to bring before the full court. Eastman wrote: "The odds are not based on the legal merits but an assessment of the justices' spines." Chesebro responded that the "odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be 'wild' chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way". Chesebro, a New York appellate attorney, had 11 days earlier emailed Rudy Giuliani with a proposal for Pence to recuse himself from the January 6 certification so a senior Republican senator could count fraudulent elector slates to declare Trump the victor. •
June 16: • Third public hearing. • Having recently acquired
Ginni Thomas's emails with Eastman, Thompson and Cheney reversed a previous decision and asked her for an interview. •
June 17: After receiving another letter from the Justice Department, now characterizing transcripts of witness interviews as "critical" to its investigations, the committee said it was "engaged in a cooperative process to address" the DOJ's needs. Like the April 20 letter, this letter was signed by Matthew Graves and Kenneth Polite, with the addition of
Matthew Olsen, the
Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division. •
June 21: • Fourth public hearing. •
Politico reported the committee had subpoenaed documentary filmmaker
Alex Holder the previous week. Holder had been granted extensive access to Trump and his inner circle and had filmed interviews with Trump before and after January 6. The existence of the footage had not been previously reported. The resultant documentary miniseries,
Unprecedented, was released two weeks later. •
June 23: Fifth public hearing. Former DOJ officials during the Trump administration testified live about how Trump tried to enlist the DOJ to
overturn the 2020 presidential election. Videotaped testimony revealed that Representatives Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, and
Louie Gohmert asked for pardons at the end of the Trump administration. Representative
Marjorie Taylor Greene may also have asked for a pardon, according to a former aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. It had been reported two months earlier that GOP Representative
Matt Gaetz had asked for a blanket pardon; his pardon request was also discussed at the hearing. •
June 28: Sixth public hearing.
July 2022 •
July 8: • Pat Cipollone, former White House counsel, testified for eight hours. He had already given a closed-door interview on April 13 and had been subpoenaed on June 29. Representative Zoe Lofgren said his testimony was consistent with that of other witnesses and that he spoke about Trump's "dereliction of duty". Testimony was closed-door and videotaped. In response to some questions, he asserted executive privilege. • Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers, offered – from jail – to testify to the committee, under the conditions that his testimony is presented without editing before an open forum, somewhere other than jail. (The committee did not entertain the idea.) •
July 11: A judge ruled that Steve Bannon's lawyers cannot argue that the committee's subpoena violated House rules nor that Trump ordered him to defy the subpoena. •
July 12: Seventh public hearing. Representative Liz Cheney revealed that Donald Trump had called one of the committee's witnesses. That person did not answer Trump's call. The witness was said to be someone who had not yet testified publicly. The person was later further identified (but not named) as a White House support staffer who did not routinely speak to Trump and who had been speaking to the committee. The phone call had happened sometime within the previous two weeks, following Cassidy Hutchinson's public testimony. •
July 15: • The committee subpoenaed the U.S. Secret Service for text messages from January 5–6, 2021, that its agents deleted. •
July 18: Jury selection began in Steve Bannon's trial. •
July 19: • The Secret Service said it could not recover the text messages. The National Archives called for an investigation. •
Garrett Ziegler, a Trump White House aide to Peter Navarro, spoke to the committee. Afterward, he livestreamed himself calling the investigation a "Bolshevistic anti-White campaign...[that] see[s] me as a young Christian who they can try to basically scare" and insulting Cassidy Hutchinson and Alyssa Farah Griffin, two Trump administration officials who have cooperated with the committee. •
July 20: The Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General informed the Secret Service that it was opening a criminal probe into the missing text messages. This probe is separate from the House committee's subpoena. It was revealed that DHS had already known that the Secret Service had deleted its text messages. •
July 24: Committee Vice Chair Representative Liz Cheney said the committee would consider subpoenaing Ginni Thomas. They had already asked her on June 16 to meet with them voluntarily. •
July 26: Chairman Thompson, in his capacity as Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee and Chairwoman Maloney of the House Oversight & Reform Committee sent a joint-letter to DHS IG and Allison C. Lerner, Chair of Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency to have Cuffari step aside from the investigation into the missing Secret Service text messages and have the CIGIE appoint another Inspector General to conduct the investigation. •
July 28: • It was reported that the committee had already interviewed Trump's former Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin – as well as other former Cabinet officials, including Labor Secretary
Eugene Scalia, Acting Defense Secretary
Chris Miller and Acting Attorney General
Jeff Rosen – and was likely to interview former Director of National Intelligence
John Ratcliffe. • Former acting White House chief of staff
Mick Mulvaney spoke to the committee for about two and a half hours. He said he was asked about his involvement in the Trump campaign, his conversations around Election Day, and his messages on January 6.
August 2022 •
August 1: Chairman Thompson repeated his July 26 request, asking DHS IG Cuffari to "step aside". He demanded documents and interviews, citing evidence that Cuffari's staff, at the direction of Deputy Inspector General Thomas Kait, may no longer be trying to obtain the Secret Service messages. •
August 8: The committee received Alex Jones's text messages. Jones's defense attorneys in the
Heslin v. Jones defamation lawsuit by Sandy Hook parents had mistakenly given this telephone data to Mark Bankston, a plaintiff attorney, who then passed the data on to the committee. Bankston informed Judge Maya Guerra Gamble that the House committee had requested the text messages. •
August 9:
Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State, met with the committee. According to Representative Zoe Lofgren, he "answer[ed] questions for quite some time". •
August 12: It was reported that the committee had recently spoken to
Elaine Chao, Trump's Secretary of Transportation. •
August 23: •
Robert O'Brien, Trump's national security adviser, testified. •
Politico reports that aides to the committee had traveled to Copenhagen the previous week to view extensive documentary footage about Roger Stone. The documentary,
A Storm Foretold, had been filmed by a crew led by Christoffer Guldbrandsen. In June, Guldbrandsen had refused that FBI could access the footage directly, requiring a
court order. •
August 30:
Tony Ornato retired as the assistant director of the Office of Training at the Secret Service. Hours later, Ornato told
NBC News he would cooperate with the investigations of the select committee and of the Department of Homeland Security. He had already testified to the select committee in March.
September 2022 •
September 1: The select committee requested that
Newt Gingrich voluntarily appear for an interview about his communications with Trump's senior aides before and after the attack as well as his television ads pushing the big lie. •
September 2: The select committee withdrew its subpoena against the Republican National Committee and Salesforce. •
September 11: • In an interview on the progressive podcast
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, Representative Raskin stated that the select committee had been "taken totally by surprise by this new scandal" of the
FBI search of Mar-a-Lago (an event over which the select committee had no jurisdiction). He also noted that the select committee's hearings could pertain to the missing text messages from the Secret Service as well as the Department of Defense. •
September 12: • The committee had reportedly been discussing the prioritization of investigative threads including: • Requesting testimony from Mike Pence and Donald Trump. • Whether to subpoena other high-profile individuals, including Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. • Referring the former president to the Department of Justice (which is expanding its own criminal probe into January 6). • Taking action against the five Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives who refused to cooperate with subpoenas: Kevin McCarthy (House Minority Leader), Jim Jordan, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, and Scott Perry. • Inquiring into the U.S. Secret Service, including the deletion of text messages, as well as allegations that former Secret Service agent Tony Ornato was personally involved in efforts to discredit the testimony of Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. •
September 13: Chairman Thompson told reporters that the Select Committee planned another public hearing for September 28 (though this was ultimately postponed due to a hurricane). He also said they planned to release an interim report in mid-October (which did not happen). •
September 14: • Chairman Thompson said the Secret Service had produced "thousands of exhibits", including text messages and "radio traffic", following the committee's July 15 subpoena. Representative Lofgren said the committee "really pressed hard for the agency to release" the material. • In a court filing, the committee asked a federal judge in California for another 3,200 pages of emails from John Eastman. Additionally, House Counsel
Douglas Letter asked the judge to review the remaining batch of emails and decide whether Eastman's claims of executive privilege are valid. •
September 15: • The Select Committee released a snippet of radio communications between Oath Keepers who were following live news coverage of the attack and reacting to President Trump's tweets. The select committee did not disclose the identities of these individuals, but they were said to be both on the ground and off-site. • Chairman Thompson stated that, in addition to possibly making referrals to the DOJ, the select committee may make referrals to other agencies like the
Federal Election Commission. •
September 17:
John McEntee, who served as Director of the
White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump Administration, testified that Representative Matt Gaetz sought a preemptive presidential pardon relating to an ongoing DOJ investigation into possible violations of federal sex trafficking laws. The DOJ had been investigating Gaetz since early 2021 over these allegations, including whether Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, but he had not been charged with any crimes. McEntee did not comment. A spokesperson for Gaetz commented indirectly, saying that Gaetz never directly asked Trump for a pardon. •
September 19: Vice Chair Liz Cheney and Representative Zoe Lofgren announced they would propose changes to the Electoral Count Act to make it harder to overturn a certified presidential election in the future. •
September 20: Representatives Cheney and Lofgren's bill,
H.R. 8873 – The Presidential Election Reform Act, was sent to the
House Committee on Rules and passed with a 9–3 vote. •
September 21: • HR 8873 passed the House 229–203, with all Democrats in favor. Nine Republicans, most of whom had voted for
Trump's 2nd impeachment, also voted in favor. HR 8873 was said to have more detail than the Senate version,
S.4573 – Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022. Senator
Susan Collins, R-Maine, told the
Washington Post this week that she preferred the Senate version, as it already had the approval of enough Senate Republicans to pass the filibuster threshold. • Ginni Thomas agreed to a voluntary interview. •
September 23: In a
60 Minutes interview, Denver Riggleman, former senior technical adviser for the January 6 Committee as well as an ex-military intelligence officer and former Republican congressman from Virginia, stated that the White House switchboard connected a telephone call to a Capitol rioter on January 6, 2021. Riggleman states that he had begged the January 6 Committee to push harder to identify the numbers. A spokesperson for the select committee that they have "run down all the leads and digested and analyzed all the information that arose from his (Riggleman's) work". •
September 25: •
Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker
Robin Vos (R) filed a lawsuit against the Jan. 6 Select Committee after receiving a subpoena calling him to testify before the committee Monday morning. • Representative Raskin confirmed on
Meet The Press that the Select Committee is aware of the communication between the White House switchboard and a rioter during the attack on the capitol. Raskin commented "You know, I can't say anything specific about that particular call, but we are aware of it." •
September 27: With
Hurricane Ian approaching Florida, the Select Committee postponed its public hearing that had been scheduled for the next day, September 28. In a joint statement, Chairman Thompson and Vice Chair Cheney stated: "We're praying for the safety of all those in the storm's path." •
September 28: The scheduled meeting was postponed because of Hurricane Ian. •
September 29: Ginni Thomas voluntarily testified in person. Chairman Thompson said Thomas still believes the presidential election was stolen and that she answered "some questions". Thomas also denied having discussed her post-election activities with her husband, a Supreme Court justice.
October 2022 •
October 4:
Kelli Ward, Chair of the
Arizona Republican Party, declined to answer questions during her subpoenaed testimony before the select committee. •
October 7: U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa dismissed Ward's request to toss out the February 15 subpoena, clearing the way for the select committee to gain access to her cell phone records. •
October 11: US Capitol Police investigated a letter sent to Chairman Thompson that contained "concerning language" as well as a suspicious substance. They decided it did not pose a threat. •
October 13: Ninth public hearing. The select committee voted unanimously, on live national TV, to subpoena Donald Trump. Trump wrote a 14-page letter in reply. •
October 19: Judge David Carter orders John Eastman to turn over an additional 33 documents to the select committee. Eight emails were of particular importance: Carter said that four related to the crime of obstruction, as they suggest that Eastman and other attorneys aimed primarily to "delay or otherwise disrupt" the certification of the election without necessarily believing the legal arguments they were submitting, and another four discussed filing lawsuits as a delay tactic. Carter ruled that they were "sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.” •
October 21: • Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison for refusing to testify. (He went on to appeal his conviction and sentence, so he remained free until July 2024.) • The select committee
formally subpoenaed former President Donald Trump for his testimony under oath as well as relevant records, having voted a week earlier to do so. They demanded that Trump provide documents by the morning of November 4 and testify on the morning of November 14. Vice-chair Cheney later said Trump's testimony must be closed-door and could not be broadcast live. While previous known subpoenas were signed solely by Chair Thompson, this is the first subpoena known to bear Vice-chair Cheney's signature as well. •
October 25:
Hope Hicks testified. •
October 28: Eastman's lawyers gave the eight emails to the committee.
November 2022 •
November 1: Vice-chair Liz Cheney said the committee was "in discussions" with Trump's lawyers regarding their subpoena for his testimony under oath. •
November 2: The committee interviewed former Secret Service agent John Gutsmiedl. •
November 3: The select committee interviewed the former head of Pence's security detail, Tim Giebels. •
November 7: The select committee interviewed the person who had driven Trump in the presidential vehicle on the day of the attack. His name was not publicly revealed. He testified that, contrary to Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony about what Tony Ornato had told her, Trump "never grabbed the steering wheel. I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all.” •
November 9: Trump's lawyers wrote to the select committee saying he would "consider" providing written responses instead of spoken testimony. •
November 14: • Trump did not comply with the subpoena for his deposition. The select committee complained that his lawyers "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". They said they would "evaluate next steps". •
November 15: Chairman Thompson stated that a Contempt of Congress referral targeting Trump “could be an option”. •
November 17: The select committee interviewed the former head of Trump's security detail, Robert Engel. •
November 30: • Wisconsin assembly speaker
Robin Vos testified. Representative Lofgren agreed: "We've now completed all of our interviews." • U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland repeated his request for "all" interview transcripts. • House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wrote a letter warning the committee that the incoming Republican-majority House of Representatives would investigate the committee's work. Chairman Thompson replied that the committee planned to publish most of its findings anyway. He also pointed out that McCarthy had defied a subpoena, "so," Thompson said, "I think the horse has left the barn".
December 2022 •
December 6: Chairman Thompson said the select committee would issue criminal referrals to the Department of Justice but suggested that it had not yet decided whom to refer. •
December 13: The committee rescheduled its vote on criminal referrals. The new date was December 19. (Several days previously, it had said it would do this on December 21.) •
December 19: • The Select Committee had its last public meeting. 18 U.S.C §§ 1512(c), 371, 1001, and 2383. • They recommended that Eastman be charged with two of the same crimes. • The committee referred Representatives
McCarthy,
Jordan,
Biggs, and
Perry to the
House Ethics Committee, recommending that they be sanctioned for not complying with subpoenas. • The committee's criminal referral to the Department of Justice also named Jeffrey Clark, Kenneth Chesebro, Mark Meadows, and Rudy Giuliani as apparent co-conspirators, though none of them were referred due to lack of evidence. • After the meeting, Represtantive Raskin explained to reporters that more criminal referrals, including for members of Congress, would be laid out in the final report. Raskin told reporters that the committee had referred these individuals because "we felt certain that there was abundant evidence that they had participated in crimes"; he noted that DOJ may criminally charge anyone they choose, should DOJ have evidence to do so. • Trump posted to
Truth Social: "What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger." Nonetheless, Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell appeared to blame Trump, saying: "The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day." Other Republican leaders avoided comment. •
December 21: The committee began releasing interview transcripts. • In the evening, the committee publicly released its final report. (The report had been expected the previous day but was delayed.) • Trump posted to Truth Social, attacking the "highly partisan Unselect Committee Report" without responding to its substance. He repeated several grievances about the select committee and the report, including its failure to look into Republican allegations of security failures being the reason for the January 6 attack. •
December 24: Trump posted to Truth Social: "I had almost nothing to do with January 6th," with his lawyer describing the committee's referrals as "pretty much worthless". •
December 28: Chairman Thompson wrote to Trump's lawyers, notifying them that the committee was withdrawing its subpoena and that Trump "is no longer obligated to comply". Thompson explained that, since the new Congress would be seated in less than a week, bringing an end to the committee, "the Select Committee can no longer pursue the specific information covered by the subpoena". == Subpoenas ==