The House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol issued subpoenas on Jan. 18 to former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, attorneys Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, and former campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn.
The three attorneys and Epshteyn have been ordered to hand over documents by Feb. 1 and sit for depositions on Feb. 8. It’s unclear at this stage whether they'll comply with the subpoenas.
“The four individuals advanced unsupported theories about election fraud, pushed efforts to overturn election results, or were in direct contact with the former President,” the House panel wrote on Twitter on Jan. 18.
“We expect these individuals to join the nearly 400 witnesses who have spoken with the Select Committee as the committee works to get answers for the American people about the violent attack on our democracy,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the panel, said in a statement.
Robert Costello, an attorney for Giuliani, said in an interview that the subpoena is “political theater” and that his client is constrained by the legal doctrines of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege.
“I don’t think there’s anything here he can testify about,” Costello said.
Powell, Giuliani, and Ellis jointly spoke at a Trump campaign news conference on Nov. 19, 2020, when they vowed to overturn the results of the November 2020 election.
In his letter to Epshteyn, Thompson noted a report that said he had participated in a phone call with Trump on the morning of Jan. 6, and delaying the certification of election results was a topic that was discussed.
The chairman made reference to Ellis’s involvement in the preparation and circulation of two memos “purporting to analyze the constitutional authority for the Vice President to reject or delay counting electoral votes from states that had submitted alternate slates of electors.”
“You actively promoted claims of election fraud on behalf of former President Trump and sought to convince state legislators to take steps to overturn the election results,” the panel wrote to Giuliani, who served as the lead Trump campaign election attorney.
Powell is accused of encouraging Trump in December 2020 to seize voting machines and “find evidence that foreign adversaries had hacked those machines and altered the results of the election.”
Officials with the Jan. 6 panel didn’t respond to a request by The Epoch Times for additional comment by press time.
