But that doesn’t mean he will suddenly be stricken by a desire to tell the truth.

The January 6 Committee has issued a subpoena for Donald Trump to testify about his effort to stay in office, the opinion of the voters otherwise notwithstanding.

Shortly after the committee’s vote last Thursday, he asked on Truth Social, “Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago?”

Of course he had an answer to his own question: “Because the Committee is a total ‘BUST’ that has only served to further divide our Country which, by the way, is doing very badly – A laughing stock all over the World?”

He has indicated that he’ll testify but only if it can be in a public session.

Actually, Trump has been testifying in public for months.  His campaign rallies, ostensibly held to build support for candidates he favors, spend little time uplifting the candidates.  He spends the largest amount of time playing the victim of a gigantic plot against his poor, abused self.

—Which is what he would try to do if the session with the committee were held in public.  It’s pretty easy to contemplate what would happen.  He expressed his attitude in a fourteen-page rambling response to the subpoena vote hours after it was taken. It began:

“This memo is being written to express our anger, disappointment, and complaint that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a Charade and Witch Hunt, and despite strong and powerful requests, you have not spent even a short moment on examining the massive Election Fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, and have targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself,”

If the committee is a witch hunt, it pretty clearly has identified who is the keeper of the broom.  And if these citizens were only “concerned,” what would they have been like if they’d been upset?

Trump still thinks he’s in control of things.

He’s not.

He’s not in control of proceedings against him in New York.

He’s not in control of proceedings against him in Georgia.

He will not dictate conditions to the January 6 Committee.  He either testifies under its procedures or he faces a possible contempt of Congress charge, a criminal charge that carries a punishment of one to twelve months in jail and a fine of $100 to $100,000.

His greatest problem is, and has been, that in any formal investigation whether it is before a grand jury or will be before this committee he will have to take an oath to tell the truth.  And truth, despite the name of his internet platform, has been a stranger to him.

As Trump sulked out of office on January 20, 2021, the Washington Post’s fact checker column tallied up its work for his four years in office:

When The Washington Post Fact Checker team first started cataloguing President Donald Trump’s false or misleading claims, we recorded 492 suspect claims in the first 100 days of his presidency. On Nov. 2 alone, the day before the 2020 vote, Trump made 503 false or misleading claims as he barnstormed across the country in a desperate effort to win reelection.

This astonishing jump in falsehoods is the story of Trump’s tumultuous reign. By the end of his term, Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day.

 Is there any expectation whatever that this leopard will change his spots when he goes before the committee?

Committee chairman Bennie Thompson believes Trump should have a chance to tell the truth. He said before the committee took its unanimous vote: “He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6. So we want to hear from him. The committee needs to do everything in our power to tell the most complete story possible and provide recommendations to help ensure that nothing like Jan. 6 ever happens again. We need to be fair and thorough in getting the full context for the evidence we’ve obtained.”

This committee is in no mood to give Trump a podium.  He has had a lot of them during the committee’s work and truth always has been in short supply on those occasions.

He can’t bully this committee. He can’t intimidate its members.  His best choice might be to meet under the committee’s rules and take the Fifth Amendment instead of answering questions, thereby avoiding possible perjury charges, as he did more than 400 times a couple of months ago when giving a deposition in the New York Attorney General’s investigation into possible real estate frauds.

Isn’t it interesting that telling the committee he is exercising his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination might be the most truthful thing he can say—or has said about those events?