Kinzinger doesn’t rule out Jan 6 committee subpoena for Trump
(CNN) — A Republican on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol on Sunday did not rule out issuing a subpoena for former President Donald Trump as it seeks to obtain information from his allies.
“I don’t know. I think if I had that answer now, I’d probably go in, you know, and not be able to see all the pieces,” Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked if the committee could do a thorough investigation without subpoenaing Trump. “If we subpoena all of a sudden the former president, we know that’s going to become kind of a circus so that’s not necessarily something we want to do up front. But if he has pieces of information we need, we certainly will.”
The House has issued subpoenas to allies of the former President, including former administration official Kash Patel and former chief of staff Mark Meadows. The committee announced last week it was moving forward to hold Trump ally Steve Bannon in criminal contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena.
Asked Friday what his message is to those who defy subpoenas from the Jan. 6 select committee, President Joe Biden told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, “I hope that the committee goes after them and holds them accountable.”
“I do, yes,” Biden said when asked if he thinks they should be prosecuted by the Department of Justice.
But DOJ spokesperson Anthony Coley said Friday that the department will “make its own independent decisions in all prosecutions based solely on the facts and the law. Period. Full stop.”
Kinzinger told Tapper the President’s comments were “appropriate” and that the potential criminal contempt referral for Bannon is the “first shot over the bow.”
“It’s very real, but it says to anybody else coming in front of the committee, ‘Don’t think that you’re gonna be able to just kind of walk away and we’re gonna forget about you, we’re not’,” he said.
Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House committee, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room” last week “nobody is off limits to a subpoena from this committee” when asked about the possibility of subpoenaing Trump.