It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
And as lawmakers present compelling evidence of criminality in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, the hearings are adding fuel to the looming question of whether the Department of Justice (DOJ) is adequately investigating those concerns.
In a letter sent Wednesday to the select committee’s chief investigative counsel, the heads of the DOJ’s national security and criminal divisions and the U.S. attorney for D.C. renewed their request for the lawmakers to share transcripts for all of their witness interviews.
“The Select Committee’s failure to grant the Department access to these transcripts complicates the Department’s ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct in relation to the January 6 attack on the Capitol,” the letter reads. “Accordingly, we renew our request that the Select Committee provide us with copies of the transcripts of all the interviews it has conducted to date.”
The committee has indicated that it plans to release its transcripts in September, and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the panel’s chairman, said this week that he does not intend to disrupt his own investigation by accelerating that timeline.
The strained relationship was also apparent as the department for months dragged its feet in acting on the House’s criminal referrals of two former Trump aides — White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and social media director Dan Scavino — for refusing to comply with select committee subpoenas.
The Justice Department ultimately declined to charge Meadows and Scavino with contempt, provoking an angry response from the panel.
Now, as the committee is presenting its public case against former President Trump and his inner circle for trying to overturn the 2020 election, the hearings thus far appear designed to pressure the department into taking action by holding the leaders of the schemes accountable.
And for some critics who think the Justice Department has been lagging in investigating the Trump White House’s potential criminal liability, the hearings have shown a stark disparity in the parallel probes.
“In a way, the structure of these hearings, the product of these hearings, has kind of been an indictment of the DOJ,” said Ankush Khardori, a former federal prosecutor who handled major fraud cases at the department. “DOJ could have been doing this stuff itself.”
The Justice Department suggested in its letter this week that by denying federal prosecutors access to interview transcripts, the select committee has hindered its ability to conduct the sort of high-level investigations and prosecutions that the lawmakers have been calling for.
While it’s unclear whether the department is pursuing any investigations into the select committee’s most high-profile witnesses, the effort to obtain the transcripts is likely more driven by the ongoing prosecutions implicated by the legislative probe.
Prosecutors said the standoff forced them to agree to delay the criminal trial for the group of Proud Boys charged with seditious conspiracy.
The committee is refusing to turn over transcripts the DOJ needs for prosecution of the Proud Boys.