The presentations offered by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol over the last few weeks revealed strong evidence of former President Donald Trump’s likely criminal conduct to overturn a U.S. election by fraud or force.
The starkness of these allegations appears supported by witness testimony, video footage, presidential archival records, emails, text messages, and other records obtained by investigators through hard-fought legal battles with opponents to the probe who—even now—remain allies to a president who campaigned to overturn election results while an armed mob stormed the Capitol.
More interviews will be conducted, according to committee chair and vice chair, Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney. That means additional subpoenas remain an option, too, as the committee prepares its interim report for September before a final report is released afterward. But time is against the probe, and should Democrats lose the House of Representatives to Republicans in the coming midterms, any further congressional oversight of the insurrection is almost certainly doomed.
Meanwhile, the only other investigatory body in America with as much vested in exploring the insurrection as the committee is the Department of Justice. Prosecutors there are moving at a steady pace though investigations unfold mostly in stealth, making progress hard to perceive.
Periodic public assurances from Attorney General Merrick Garland saying the agency does not conduct its investigations in public have done little to quell criticism. The department is moving too slow for many, and that has raised the hackles of not just those outside the Jan. 6 committee’s membership, but those inside it too.
Both Reps. Jamie Raskin and Elaine Luria have piped up in recent days with remarks pointing at their own impatience. Luria told NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd after the committee’s last hearing that Garland “doesn’t need to wait on us” to go forward. Raskin told SiriusXM host Joe Madison he “wants to see some motion” while “we’re still in front of the 2022 election,” because threats to free and fair elections still linger.
Garland said during a press conference last week the department has to “get this right.”
“For the people who are concerned, as I think every American should be, about protecting democracy, we have to do two things: We have to hold accountable every person who is criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election, and we must do it in a way filled with integrity and professionalism, the way the Justice Department conducts investigations,” Garland said.
While the Jan. 6 committee could issue a criminal referral, that referral would have no legal force of effect, making it mostly symbolic, and—if the Justice Department is as unmoved by external pressure as it claims—unlikely to actually spur the department to move any faster.
It is a gesture that members of the probe have been split on extending for months.
It is not as if the Department of Justice is doing nothing or has not been paying attention without the referral.
Grand jury subpoenas have been issued to those who helped plan the rally at the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6, like ‘Stop the Steal’ founder Ali Alexander. They have also gone out to individuals caught up in the fake elector scheme like its top architects Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and Pence-pressure-strategy-writer John Eastman. Former DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark has also seen his devices seized in recent days.
Clark drafted a letter for state officials in Georgia that falsely declared widespread fraud in the 2020 election. It never went out, but Clark pushed to have it sent while gunning to replace then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen if he and other officials wouldn’t go along with the plan. Rosen wouldn’t and a last-minute mass resignation threatened by Rosen and others at the DOJ stopped the memo from being sent.
Members of former Vice President Mike Pence’s staff, including his chief of staff, Marc Short, and counsel Greg Jacob, have also appeared before a federal grand jury.
What either man said to the grand jury is unknown, but important to recall are their previous accounts to the committee. Short and Jacob often had searing indictments of the former president’s conduct toward Pence as the White House rapidly divided itself between those willing to follow Trump right over a Constitutional cliff versus those who were not.
Important to note is that Short told committee investigators under oath that Trump was informed by Eastman directly that a push to have Pence unilaterally stop or delay the count during the joint session was a violation of the Electoral Count Act.
There’s also another inquiry unfolding, this one in Fulton County, Georgia, where District Attorney Fani Willis is exploring whether Trump broke the law when he pressured state election officials to “find” votes for him and declare the election stolen. Giuliani has been subpoenaed in this probe, and so too has U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Trump has not yet been charged with any crimes. He is poised soon to announce his 2024 campaign for the White House. While the hearings may have cast Trump in the correct light—he is a power-hungry megalomaniac more obsessed with crowd size than national security—he still has the support of Republican Party leadership, including House leader Kevin McCarthy and the conference’s third-in-command, Elise Stefanik.
Lack of action by the Department of Justice will not just embolden Trump, but also his supporters still filling the halls of Congress.
Rep. Jim Banks, for example, told Politico just last week he would give Trump his full support should he run again. Banks was one of two Republicans nominated by GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy to sit on the select committee investigating the attack. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi rejected Banks—and Rep. Jim Jordan—because she said their appointments would cut at the very integrity of the committee’s work.
Banks voted to overturn the election results after the attack, and when he was rejected to serve on the committee because of this, he responded publicly by saying: “If Democrats were serious about investigating political violence, this committee would be studying not only the January 6 riot at the Capitol but also the hundreds of violent political riots last summer when many more innocent Americans and law-enforcement officers were attacked."
