The House Select Committee probing the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot has issued a subpoena for Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Trump campaign fundraiser and fiancée of Donald Trump Jr.
In a statement on Thursday, Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said that "because Ms Guilfoyle backed out of her original commitment to provide a voluntary interview, we are issuing today's subpoena that will compel her to testify".
He added that the panel expects the fiancée of Donald Trump's eldest son "to comply with the law and cooperate".
Panel investigators noted in the subpoena that they were particularly interested in Guilfoyle's claims that she helped fund the "Save America" rally just before the 6 January Capitol riot.
The subpoena comes a week after Guilfoyle's legal team abruptly halted her remote interview with the 6 January House Select Committee, claiming that panel members were leaking the details.
Lawyer Joseph Tacopina underscored that Guilfoyle, "under threat of subpoena, agreed to meet exclusively with counsel for the Select Committee in a good faith effort to provide true and relevant evidence". He added that the legal team had decided to stop the interview, when committee members "notorious for leaking information appeared" in the virtual call.
Tacopina argued that those concerns "were validated as the [6 January] committee within less than two minutes leaked news of the break to the media". A spokesperson for the panel rejected the lawyer's claims.
The committee wants to know whether Guilfoyle played any role in the events related to the Capitol riot. Investigators argued that Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancée played a key role in raising money for the rallies that brought Trump supporters to Washington that day. Guilfoyle is also thought to have been in the Oval Office with members of the Trump family on the morning of 6 January 2021. The Select Committee argues that she may have been in the know about conversations Trump had on that day.
The committee was created by Democrats on 1 July 2021 to find evidence proving Trump and his allies orchestrated the attack on the Capitol on 6 January of that year, when scores of his supporters breached the building to prevent Congress from certifying the election win of Democrat Joe Biden. Five protesters and a policeman were killed and more than a hundred law enforcement officers were injured as Trump supporters besieged the building.
Trump eventually turned to his now-suspended Twitter account to urge his supporters "to stay peaceful" and "go home". He was impeached for an unprecedented second time over accusations of "incitement to insurrection", but managed to evade conviction in the Senate.