House panel investigating Jan. 6 riot subpoenas former Trump advisers

Timeline of the riot at the US Capitol on Jan. 6

What started as a congressional and democratic exercise in the peaceful transfer of power, devolved into death, destruction and chaos.

WASHINGTON - A House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol has subpoenaed four advisers and associates to former President Donald Trump who were in contact with him before and during the attack.

The panel subpoenaed former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Dan Scavino, former Defense Department official Kashyap Patel and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., wrote to the four men that the committee is investigating "the facts, circumstances, and causes" of the attack and asked them to produce documents and appear at depositions in mid-October.

The subpoenas are a significant escalation for the panel, which plans to launch the interview phase of the investigation after sorting through thousands of pages of documents the committee requested from federal agencies and social media companies. The goal is to provide a complete accounting of what went wrong when the Trump loyalists quickly overwhelmed police and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory — and to prevent anything like it from ever happening again.

Hundreds of Trump's followers violently broke into the Capitol that day and tried to overturn his defeat, interrupting the certification of President Joe Biden's victory.