The U.S. House of Representatives committee led by Wyoming Republican turncoat Liz Cheney, voted unanimously on Thursday to subpoena former President Donald Trump, a move that could lead to criminal charges if Trump does not comply – and here’s why he shouldn’t.
Federal law says that failure to comply with a congressional subpoena is a misdemeanor, punishable by one to 12 months imprisonment. Let’s be honest, Trump will never see the inside of a cell, and if he’s smart, which he is, he’ll drag out the “non-compliance process” for months while his defense team rallies the support they need to toss this nonsense out the window. Not to mention “one to 12 months imprisonment” is a joke. No judge is going to sentence Trump to a month of anything.
But here’s where things get really interesting. If the select committee’s subpoena is completely ignored, the full House must vote on whether to make a referral to the Department of Justice, which has the authority to decide whether to bring charges. The J6 committee can’t bring up charges, and the House of Representatives can’t bring up charges. Only the DOJ can formally charge the President if the House votes to do so.
The most likely outcome therefore will be to bring the House in for a vote, and with the midterm elections now only a few weeks away, there is no way the J6 committee or the DOJ is going to pull that off in such a short period of time. Not to mention, there’s a compliance process they need to get through first and that process could take weeks alone.
By the time the House of Representatives is called in to vote on whether charges should be brought up against the former President, the Republicans may very well have control of the lower chamber, therefore securing a vote to drop the charges being recommended by the J6 committee.
Bar Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and maybe Mitt Romney, I don’t see any other Republican congressional member being dumb enough to vote to bring up charges against Trump. It would be political suicide, and with the 2024 Presidential election only 2 years away, I’m not sure any sane candidate would want to be associated with this mess.
We’ll see how Trump handles the subpoena, but if I were his lawyer, I’d be telling him to ignore the request and run that midterm clock out. If Democrats keep the house, then Trump will most likely not run for President anyway, so he really has nothing to lose by taking a gamble on a GOP midterm win.
The House select committee’s seven Democratic and two Republican members voted 9-0 on Thursday in favor of issuing a subpoena for Trump to provide documents and testimony under oath in connection with the January 6th Capitol riot.
The subpoena is expected within days, and would typically give Trump a date by which he should comply. It was not clear when the full House – which is out of Washington until mid-November – could vote on whether to make a criminal referral.
