House panel subpoenas organizers of Jan. 6 Trump rally

The remaining names on the list were involved in the management and production of the rally and dealt with scheduling, operations and logistics. Those individuals are Justin Caporale and Tim Unes of Event Strategies Inc., Megan Powers of MPowers Consulting LLC, Hannah Salem of Salem Strategies LLC and Lyndon Brentnall of RMS Protective Services.

Event Strategies says on its website that it has “played a significant role in every US presidential campaign since its founding.” Caporale and Unes were listed on Jan. 6 permit paperwork as the rally’s project manager and stage manager, per the committee.

Powers, who served as the 2020 campaign’s director of operations, worked as a White House press aide and at NASA, and was listed as one of two operations managers for the Jan. 6 event. Salem, a former special assistant to the president and director of White House press advance, was the rally’s “operations manager for logistics and communications,” according to the permit paperwork.

The panel said Brentnall was listed on the permit paperwork as “On-site supervisor.” He is the owner of Florida-based RMS Protective Services, which advertises protection, investigations, surveillance and bug sweeps.

None of the subpoena recipients contacted by The Associated Press on Wednesday evening responded for requests for comment.

Many of the rioters who stormed the Capitol walked up the National Mall from the rally as Trump spoke for more than an hour and told the huge crowd to “fight like hell” and overturn his defeat. He repeated his baseless claims about widespread election fraud, despite the fact that they had been refuted by election officials and courts across the country.

At the rally, Trump suggested the protestors march to the Capitol from the staging area near the White House to encourage GOP lawmakers to “step up” and overturn the will of voters to grant him another term in office. Many did, and he was still speaking as people started rushing the building.

Trump's reelection campaign said in January that it “did not organize, operate or finance the event" on Jan. 6. It said that if any former employees or independent contractors for the campaign took part, “they did not do so at the direction of the Trump campaign.”

The House Jan. 6 committee last week issued subpoenas to 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. The four men are among Trump’s most loyal aides and some of them talked to him or were with him that day.

Thompson wrote to those four that the committee is investigating “the facts, circumstances, and causes” of the attack and asked them to produce documents by Oct. 7 and appear at depositions in mid-October.

In July, the committee held an emotional first hearing with four police officers who battled the insurrectionists and were injured and verbally abused as the rioters broke into the building. They spoke of their lingering physical and mental injuries and described in detail how they were attacked by the rioters. One officer said he was called racial slurs as he held the insurrectionists back.

At least nine people who were there died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot and killed by police as she tried to break into the House chamber and three other Trump supporters who suffered medical emergencies. Two police officers died by suicide in the days that immediately followed, and a third officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and died after engaging with the protesters. A medical examiner later determined he died of natural causes.

The Metropolitan Police announced this summer that two more of their officers who had responded to the insurrection, Officers Kyle DeFreytag and Gunther Hashida, had also died by suicide.