Squabble Between January 6 Panel, DoJ Spills Into Public View Amid Feud Over Info Sharing

The House Select Committee on the January 6 attack on the Capitol began a seven part series of public hearings on its findings earlier this month, accusing Donald Trump of deliberately attempting to foment a “violent coup.” Trump and his allies dismissed the probe as a “one-sided witch hunt” and “publicity stunt” and have refused to cooperate.

Apparent behind-the-scenes tensions between the January 6 Committee and the Department of Justice spilled into public view this week over the Committee’s refusal to share transcripts of interviews with criminal suspects.

The documents, related to testimony of a group of Proud Boys charged with seditious conspiracy, are being withheld by the House panel, forcing prosecutors to delay a trial of the militiamen. The heads of the DoJ’s national security and criminal divisions, as well as US Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew M. Graves, sent an open letter to the House probe’s chief investigative counsel, Timothy Heaphy on Wednesday, warning of the implications of withholding the documents.

“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 warned. “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,” it added.

The committee had originally promised to release the transcripts in September. However, under DoJ pressure, congressional Democrats have said they will start sharing the transcripts in July, after the conclusion of their series of public hearings.

Earlier this week, a defiant Bennie Thompson, the House panel’s chairman, said that while he would “work with” the DoJ, the committee wouldn’t disrupt its own probe. “We are not gonna stop what we’re doing to share the information that we’ve gotten so far with the Department of Justice. We have to do our work,” Thompson said Thursday.

The extent of apparent back-and-forth bickering between the House panel and Justice first came to light earlier this month, when the DoJ declined to charge former Trump officials Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino with contempt of Congress for their refusal to comply with subpoenas summoning them to testify in the January 6 probe.

“Based on the individual facts and circumstances of their alleged contempt, my office will not be initiating prosecutions for criminal contempt as requested in the referral,” Graves said in a letter in early June. The committee slammed the DoJ for the move, saying it found “the decision to reward” the two men “for their continued attack on the rule of law puzzling” and dismissing Meadows’ defence that he was entitled to immunity from testimony by virtue of his position as Mr. Trump’s chief of staff.

“In a way, the structure of these hearings, the product of these hearings, has kind of been an indictment of the DoJ,” former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori said, commenting on the spat in an interview with The Hill.

“And I think some people in the public are probably scratching their head saying like ‘Why are these questions coming from Congress about whether Trump was lying for months about election fraud?...And why am I hearing these damning facts, that would seem highly relevant to a criminal investigation of the White House, from Congress,” Khardori added.

The DoJ has shown reluctance to succumb to the House panel’s every whim, particularly amid concerns among Republicans and independents that the Committee, which has just two Never-Trump Republicans on it alongside seven Democrats, is excessively partisan.

Last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded in its own probe that there was little evidence that the January 6 2021 violence was the result of any organized plot by the president –challenging a central tenant of claims made by the House probe, which kicked off last July.

Trump and his allies have dismissed the House probe as a “partisan witch hunt,” and the public primetime hearings as a “show trial” intended to score political points for the ruling party ahead of the upcoming November midterm elections, where Democrats are expected to take a beating amid the economic woes facing the US. An ABC News/IPSOS poll this month found that between 73 and 83 percent of Americans saw the gas prices, inflation and the economy as top issues of concern in determining their vote.

The DoJ-January 6 Committee spat also comes amid growing polarization among Americans. A worrying Yahoo News/YouGov poll found this week that 49 Americans are concerned that their country is “likely” to “cease being a democracy,” and that only 47 percent are ready to rule out “taking up arms against the government” to “protect the country from radical extremists."