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Miller’s director of communications Tatum Wallace said their office is “awaiting advice from House counsel,” after which they will provide an update.
Committee Aides Jan. 6 declined to comment on the decision. Mulvaney did not respond to a request for comment.
Legal experts, including former House lawyers, say the committee’s Jan.6 decision could set a new precedent. The Chamber has rarely exercised its subpoena power, and when it has done so, it is in the context of inquiries carried out by the Ethics Committee, a bipartite panel explicitly charged with internal disciplinary matters.
While there is no doubt that the House has the legal power to subpoena its own employees in matters of national importance, it can be a new frontier for an institution already mired in mistrust and discord.
“In the Jack Abramoff scandal, at one point, the FBI surreptitiously ‘hijacked’ a staff member to gather incriminating evidence as a member he worked for who sent shockwaves across the Capitol,” former chamber attorney Stan Brand said in an email. “It could have a similar impact.”
“While not necessarily a legal rubicon, I think it has the potential to impact the member / staff relationship which is built on loyalty and trust,” Brand continued, adding that “the exposure of staff to subpoenas could affect how members view their staff (as potential witnesses against them).
Jan.6 investigators have already attempted to take unprecedented action, such as subpoenaing phone records from members of Congress who allegedly had contact with Donald Trump and the White House prior to the Jan.6 attack. These measures may become necessary, they stressed, in part because of the unprecedented nature of the attack itself – an attack on a pillar of American democracy that threatened the peaceful transfer of power.
The committee also took the rare step of issuing immediate subpoenas without offering witnesses the opportunity to comply voluntarily first. The move, panel chairman Bennie Thompson and other members said, is to prevent Trump allies from carrying out prolonged lockdowns that could derail the investigation for good. Trump himself has thwarted several congressional inquiries during his presidency by embroiling the House in lengthy court battles, and the Jan.6 committee is keen to avoid a repeat.
“Concerns about setting precedent need to take a back seat for Committee 1/6 to get the truth and whether that means subpoenaing congressional staff, members of Congress, congressional telephone tapes or anything else, these concerns must prevail, “said Norm Eisen, lawyer. to the Judicial Committee when Trump was impeached in 2019. “The concern for the truth must prevail. “
As a rule, members of Congress and their staff are protected from legal proceedings by the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution. Courts have generally taken a broad view of conduct that can be seen as a formal matter by lawmakers – and the Supreme Court has ruled that staff members generally enjoy the same protections as they are extensions of their bosses.
But Eisen, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, pointed out that these protections only apply when there is encroachment by other branches of government – and that in any event, the conduct in question here cannot probably not to be described as part of Mulvaney’s official business. .
“In my opinion, they strike the right balance because of the central importance of their investigation to the future of our nation,” Eisen said.
Maggie Mulvaney isn’t the only Hill staff member of interest to the Jan.6 committee. The panel asked the National Archives to produce Trump White House communications regarding Thomas Van Flein, the chief of staff to Representative Paul Gosar (R-Arizona), and Judd Deere, a former White House aide who now works for Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.).
But the committee did not specifically target these assistants, and the decision to assign an existing staff member raises potentially uncomfortable new questions about how the House might exercise its subpoena power in the future.
“This is, of course, a much more politically charged issue and will raise the question of retaliation the next time the Republicans are in power,” said a former House official who has been implicated in similar inquiries. “But this is where both the House and the Senate are headed, or already there.”
A lingering question: what does Mulvaney know? His role in the rally is murky.
Mulvaney informed her office that she would take two days off to help with the event, where her job was to escort VIPs who arrived at the White House to their seats, according to a Home source familiar with the situation. But there are still questions about the nature of the conversations she’s had with senior White House officials about the event as well, which the committee seeks to explore.
“According to newspaper articles, those who work with you and [Women for America First] to organize the Jan. 6 rally collectively communicated with President Trump, White House officials including Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and others about the rally and other events scheduled to coincide with the certification of Electoral College results for 2020, ”wrote Thompson in his cover letter to the subpoena to Mulvaney.
Mulvaney is asked to turn in documents by October 13 and testify by October 21, making her an early witness who can help the committee piece together conversations held by key players.
The Justice Department and the courts have also viewed the Jan.6 attack as a unique moment in American history that warrants unprecedented measures to deal with it.
Federal authorities arrested more than 600 people for participating in the Capitol violation, which left more than 130 police officers injured and several rioters dead. Several DC and Capitol Hill police officers who responded to the attack later died or committed suicide.
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