These former presidents testified before Congress

Former President Trump seems unlikely to testify before Congress in response to the subpoena issued Thursday by the panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. But if he does, he won’t be the first former president to testify before Congress.

Exact estimates vary. One historian detailed five former presidents who have testified, the Senate Historical Office and Senate Library’s analysis indicates at least four former presidents have testified before congressional committees a total of 16 times and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 panel, told CNN the figure amounts to as many as seven former presidents.

Those appearances, however, generally dealt with policy and judicial issues ranging from the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to the federal budget. 

The former presidents often appeared before the panels to advance their own agendas, a stark difference from Trump, who would be questioned as a central figure in the House panel’s investigation.

“He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6. So we want to hear from him,” Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said at Thursday’s hearing shortly before he and his eight committee colleagues unanimously voted to issue the subpoena.

Trump questioned the subpoena on his Truth Social app on Thursday, suggesting he will likely fight it. The committee’s existence will expire prior to the swearing in of the next Congress in January, creating a narrow window for it to secure Trump’s participation.

Raskin told CNN there would be “nothing really extraordinary” about Trump’s testimony, saying former presidents as long ago as John Quincy Adams and John Tyler testified before Congress.

“Seven former presidents have come forward to testify in American history, two of them by subpoena,” Raskin told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

Stephen Stathis, an analyst who for years worked for the Library of Congress, wrote in a 1983 journal article that John Tyler became the first former president to appear before Congress.

Tyler was subpoenaed in connection with an investigation into the use of public funds by his secretary of state, Daniel Webster. The committee exonerated Webster, an outcome Stathis in part attributed to Tyler’s testimony.

Stathis and the Senate Historical Office and Senate Library’s list both said Theodore Roosevelt testified before a congressional committee in August 1911.

He appeared before a House panel investigating the United States Steel Corporation as the federal government raised antitrust concerns, and Roosevelt was a prominent backer of efforts to break up monopolies.

Stathis indicated Roosevelt was not subpoenaed, but he rather obliged after the committee advised the former chief executive his testimony would be appreciated.

Roosevelt also testified about one year later about campaign expenditures as he ran on a third-party ticket for president. Roosevelt ultimately lost the election, which came about four years after he left the White House.

Years later, William Howard Taft testified before Congress 12 times following his presidency, according to the Senate Historical Office’s records.

All but one of those appearances occurred during Taft’s subsequent tenure as chief justice of the Supreme Court, where he served between 1921 and 1930.

Half of Taft’s 12 post-presidency congressional appearances were before the House or Senate judiciary committees or their subcommittees.

Harry Truman and Gerald Ford later became the two most recent former presidents to testify before Congress.

Truman in 1955 appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to discuss the United Nations Charter, and Ford appeared before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee near the bicentennial of the Constitution, according to the analysis.

Updated at 6:25 p.m.