Former United States President Donald Trump has reportedly hired Dhillon Law Group to engage with the House Select Committee in an upcoming subpoena of him.
The committee's subpoena of the Republican businessman is for testimony and documents related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot. With Trump's latest move, he has partnered with the Dhillon Law Group, which already represents multiple witnesses who have appeared before the committee, to fight against the legal issue.
Dhillon Law Group
These include former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump ally Seb Gorka, and Women for America First co-founder Amy Kremer. An individual familiar with the matter said that the law group was now tasked with negotiating the terms of the Trump subpoena.
The panel's chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson, has not yet issued the document to Trump or his attorneys. The law firm's managing partner, Harmeet Dhillon, is a national Republican committeewoman from California.
Dhillon helmed litigation related to other conservative causes, including pushing back on policies that shut down schools, churches, and businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has also been critical of previous select committee and Justice Department grand jury subpoenas to her other clients, as per Politico.
The vice chair of the committee, Rep. Liz Cheney, indicated that the subpoena would demand the former president's testimony and also relevant documents about his involvement in the events that preceded the Capitol Hill attack made by his supporters.
The other Republican on the committee, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, said that the panel has made it clear that the subpoena was coming for Trump. He noted that nothing has changed on that front and noted that the committee would see where they go from there.
According to the Washington Post, if Trump resists the subpoena, the committee could face a number of struggles in compelling the former president to comply. These could ultimately end in a Constitutional showdown between the two sides, legal experts and congressional counsel with experience in congressional oversight and investigations said.
Subpoena Against Trump
Previously, the Republican businessman told his advisers that he would potentially be willing to testify live before the committee, people familiar with his thinking said. However, in a 14-page response to the committee last week, the former president declined to say whether or not he would cooperate with the subpoena.
Instead, Trump repeated false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, baseless allegations that fueled the unprecedented attack on the Capitol building. Some people on the former president's legal team privately said that allowing their client to testify in any capacity would be a mistake.
Multiple advisers also said that they do not actually expect Trump to go through with testifying before the committee. A person familiar with the Trump legal team's thinking said that the committee will not allow the former president to testify live because the number one priority of the panel is to control the narrative.
The panel took the historic step of voting to subpoena Trump, with all nine members of the panel in support to approve the resolution to compel the former president to testify regarding the attack on the Capitol. The committee argued that the riot was the violent culmination of Trump's many efforts to overturn the 2020 election, ABC News reported.
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