(USA Features) Former President Donald Trump blasted Democratic members of the Jan. 6 commission hand-selected by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after they demanded his White House mental health records.
“The Leftist ‘select committee’ has further exposed itself as a partisan sham and waste of taxpayer dollars with a request that’s timed to distract Americans from historic and global catastrophes brought on by the failures of Joe Biden and the Democrats,” Trump said Wednesday in a statement after the panel’s announcement.
Trump went on to pledge that he would defend “executive privilege” in court, if need be, while railing against what he sees as the political nature of the demand.
“Unfortunately, this partisan exercise is being performed at the expense of long-standing legal principles of privilege,” he continued.
“Executive privilege will be defended, not just on behalf of my Administration and the Patriots who worked beside me, but on behalf of the Office of the President of the United States and the future of our Nation,” he added.
“These Democrats only have one tired trick—political theater—and their latest request only reinforces that pathetic reality,” the former president said.
Earlier this week, the committee, which is chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said it would seek phone and data records from some Republicans allied with Trump as well as family members from around the time of the Capitol incursion.
“Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who serves as chairman of the Select Committee, has said that he hopes to issue subpoenas by the end of August. Thompson also has signed off on a broader investigative strategy that will serve as a guide for the panel’s work going forward, according to a source familiar with the planning document,” CNN reported on Monday.
It’s not clear which Republicans will be targeted with subpoenas. However, a number of GOP lawmakers including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio) have said publicly they spoke with Trump by phone on Jan. 6.
In addition, some Democrats have accused Republicans of interacting with people who later stormed the Capitol, suggesting they were in on the plot, but have yet to provide any evidence to support their allegations.
In an interview with CNN, Thompson would not name which Republicans he would target with subpoenas, but did confirm that the panel was preparing to send letters to telecom companies and social media platforms without naming them as well.
“In terms of telecom companies, they’re the ones that pretty much you already know, the major networks, the social media platforms, those kinds of things,” Thompson said.
“I can tell you that we’ll look at everything that will give us information on what happened on January 6,” Thompson said. “We will look at all records at some point.”
Shortly after the panel held its first open hearings which featured four Capitol Police and D.C. Metro Police officers, a survey found that more Americans want last summer’s Black Lives Matter-related violence and protests investigated than the Jan. 6 incident.
“Sixty-six percent of the 996 likely voters surveyed said they want the BLM riots investigated, while just 49 percent indicated support for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s investigation into January 6,” The Spectator reported last month, citing a Rasmussen Reports survey.