WASHINGTON — An attorney involved in former President Donald Trump’s phone call trying to force Georgia officials to quash his loss in that state, and an anchor for One America News who would have helped draft an executive order that would Seizing voting machines are among the targets of six new subpoenas Tuesday by the Jan. 6 House Committee.
Cleta Mitchell, a prominent advocate for Republican candidates and causes, participated in Trump’s Jan. 2 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump demanded that his office “find” enough votes to win that state , while Christina Bobb, who is also a lawyer, was deeply implicated in a number of elements of Trump’s plans, including a Jan. 6 “war room” at the Willard Hotel near the White House.
None responded to HuffPost requests.
She and the other four pro-Trump attorneys who were issued the new subpoenas have been ordered to return the documents in their possession by March 15.
“The selection committee is seeking information regarding attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of electoral votes and any efforts to corruptly alter the outcome of the 2020 election,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said in a statement .
For years, Mitchell was a respected attorney with expertise in electoral law and campaign finance rules. After the Georgia phone call became public when Raffensperger released an audio recording to the Washington Post, she resigned from the law firm of Foley Larder, which had expressed concerns about her participation.
Trump supporters occupy the West Front of the Capitol and the Inauguration Grandstands on Wednesday, January 6, 2021.
Bill Clark via Getty Images
That call, in which Trump repeated his lies that the Georgia election was riddled with fraud and threatened Raffensperger with possible prosecution if he didn’t do as Trump requested, sparked an ongoing criminal investigation by the Fulton County District Attorney.
Bobb, meanwhile, has been a key figure in a number of Trump’s attempts to overthrow the election and remain in power. “They were reportedly involved in efforts to draft an executive order for President Trump that would have directed federal agencies to seize voting machines in numerous contested states to gather evidence of alleged voter fraud,” their subpoena reads.
Bobb’s network OAN has served Trump as a propaganda organ for years and was sued last year by Dominion Voting Systems for its unsubstantiated claims that the company colluded with foreign powers to steal Trump’s election.
The other four summonses are:
- Kenneth Chesebro, a Wisconsin attorney involved in a plan to send a list of fake Trump electors to Congress and the National Archives even though Trump had lost that state;
- Katherine Friess, a Washington, DC attorney who has also worked on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, including, according to the subpoena, a trip to Michigan to reverse Trump’s loss there;
- Kurt Olson, a Maryland attorney who was subpoenaed to make multiple phone calls to Trump on Jan. 6;
- Phillip Kline, the former Kansas Attorney General who organized a meeting between Trump and 300 state legislators to peddle false allegations of voter fraud in order to get then-Vice President Mike Pence to delay ballot certification on Jan. 6.
Despite losing the election by 7 million votes nationally and 306 to 232 in the electoral college, Trump became the first president in more than two centuries of elections to refuse to transfer power peacefully. His instigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — his last-ditch effort to remain in office — resulted in five deaths, including one police officer, injured another 140 officers, and led to four police suicides.
He is now under investigation by federal and state officials in multiple jurisdictions.
In addition to the investigations by the January 6 Committee of the House of Representatives and Fulton County, Georgia, New York State Attorney General Letitia James has conducted a civil investigation into his family business, while the Manhattan District Attorney has conducted a criminal investigation.
And the Justice Department has confirmed it is investigating at least one element of Trump’s scheme to stay in power: the submission of fake Trump “electors” in seven states, which Biden won.
At a Jan. 29 rally, Trump urged his supporters to stage “the biggest protests we’ve ever had in Washington, DC, in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere” if prosecutors were after him, “because our… country and our elections are corrupt.”
Despite this, Trump remains the dominant figure in the Republican Party and has openly spoken of running for the presidency again in 2024.
