Jan. 6 committee subpoenas staffers, operatives who sought to send 'fake electors' to Congress
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack on Tuesday issued six subpoenas to Trump campaign staffers and Republican operatives in several key battleground states who supported efforts to send "fake electors" to Congress in an effort to challenge the 2020 election results.
The group includes Michael Roman and Michael Brown, who worked on Election Day operations for Trump's 2020 campaign, as well as Mark Finchem, Arizona GOP Party Chair Kelli Ward, and former Michigan GOP Chair Laura Cox.
Finchem is now running to serve as Arizona's top election official, while Ward has sued to stop the committee from obtaining her and her husband's phone records.
The committee also subpoenaed Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who chartered buses to Washington on Jan. 6 and organized a post-election hearing in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to raise claims of widespread and unproven voter fraud. He was also involved in Trump's White House meeting with Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers in December of 2020, as Trump worked to overturn the results in the state and in other presidential battlegrounds.
Mastriano was also a leader of the GOP's 2020 election audit in Pennsylvania, which was based on a similar review conducted by Republicans in Arizona.
Cox, the leader of the Republican Party in Michigan during the 2020 election, also supported Trump's efforts to challenge the results in her state. In the aftermath of the election, Trump also gathered a group of Michigan GOP lawmakers at the White House to make his case.
"The Select Committee is seeking information about efforts to send false slates of electors to Washington and change the outcome of the 2020 election," Jan. 6 committee chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in a statement. "We're seeking records and testimony from former campaign officials and other individuals in various states who we believe have relevant information about the planning and implementation of those plans."
Thompson recently told ABC News that the panel's planned public hearings this spring would review Trump's state-level pressure campaign and the unsuccessful lawsuits that sought to challenge election results in key swing states, and will possibly include testimony from state and local election officials.
To date, the committee has collected tens of thousands of pages of records, conducted more than 560 interviews, and issued at least 81 subpoenas.
