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- The January 6 House committee focuses on Trump team meetings at their Willard hotel "command center."
- John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani were among those who met at the hotel in the days before the Capitol attack.
- The committee plans to issue subpoenas to about 20 top Trump lieutenants, says The Guardian.
The January 6 House select committee is turning its attention to the Willard hotel "command center" where Trump allies gathered to discuss plans to subvert the 2020 election results, a source familiar with the matter told The Guardian.
The committee plans to issue subpoenas to 20 top Trump lieutenants as early as next week, the source said.
The subpoenas are aimed at obtaining the legal advice offered to Trump on how he could stop Biden's election win from being certified, according to The Guardian's source.
The luxury Willard Intercontinental Hotel at 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, a block away from the White House, served as a "command center." A team of presidential advisers and lawyers plotted a legal strategy to reinstate Trump for a second term, The Washington Post previously reported.
Meetings involved Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former White House strategist Steve Bannon, and conservative legal scholar John Eastman, among other right-wing figures.
Last week Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, confirmed that they intend to subpoena Eastman.
Eastman's role came to light that he presented Trump with a memo on January 4 outlining various legal strategies he could exploit to stay in power.
Trump reportedly seized on the memo, and tried to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject the results during the election certification in Congress on January 6.
The committee is also reportedly considering a subpoena for Giuliani, who led the legal strategy meetings at the Willard Hotel, The Guardian said.
Eastman, a lawyer and senior fellow at The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. has suggested that he was at the hotel with Giuliani on the morning of January 6.
"We had a war room at the Willard . . . kind of coordinating all of the communications," he told talk show host Peter Boyles, per The Washington Post.
Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik was also present at some of the meetings, helping to investigate allegations of election fraud, The Post said.
Kerik said his firm billed the Trump campaign more than $55,000 for several suites in the Willard for the legal team, and records show he was later reimbursed, the paper reported.
According to the paper, three people familiar with the operation described intense work in the days and hours leading up to Congress convening on January 6 to count the electoral votes.
Bennie Thompson said on Thursday that he had signed about 20 new subpoenas to go out "soon," but did not confirm who they would target.
The timeline was delayed after Democrats became preoccupied with talks to pass the long-awaited $1 trillion infrastructure bill on Friday, The Guardian said.
So far, Trump allies have resisted subpoenas.
Steve Bannon refused to comply with a subpoena, and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark would not answer the committee's questions, citing attorney-client privilege.
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