The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack issued a subpoena on Friday to Donald J. Trump, paving the way for a potentially historic court fight over whether Congress can compel testimony from a former president.
The subpoena was the most aggressive step taken so far by what was already one of the most consequential congressional investigations in decades. Coming as the Justice Department conducts a separate criminal inquiry into efforts to overturn the 2020 election and weeks before the midterm elections, the subpoena threatened to thrust Mr. Trump and the Jan. 6 committee into a legal battle that could ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
In an attempt to persuade Mr. Trump to comply, the committee was quick to cite numerous examples of former presidents, from John Quincy Adams to Gerald R. Ford, who have testified before Congress after they left office. But the Supreme Court has never decided a case in which a former president refused to comply with a congressional subpoena, and the panel made no mention of cases where presidents have resisted legislative inquiries.
With little more than two months until the committee sunsets, the timing of the subpoena also raised questions about whether the panel believes Mr. Trump’s testimony is truly critical to it finishing its work, or if the subpoena is, as some Republicans have claimed, a tactic to generate headlines about Mr. Trump’s misdeeds ahead of the November midterm elections. Committee members, who are tasked with writing a voluminous report about the Jan. 6 attack, have said they wanted to build up as much evidence as possible about Mr. Trump’s actions before attempting to question him….
The subpoena to Mr. Trump requires him to turn over documents by Nov. 4 and to appear for a deposition on or about Nov. 14. It says the interview could last several days.