DOJ REQUESTS TRANSCRIPTS FROM JAN. 6 PANEL
House committee has interviewed more than 1K people
The Justice Department has asked the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack for transcripts of interviews it is conducting, which have included discussions with associates of former President Donald Trump, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
The move, coming as Attorney General Merrick Garland appears to be ramping up the pace of his investigation into the 2021 Capitol riot, is the clearest sign yet of a wide-ranging inquiry at the Justice Department.
The House committee has interviewed more than 1,000 people so far, and the transcripts could be used as evidence in potential criminal cases, to pursue new leads or as a baseline text for new interviews conducted by federal law enforcement officials.
Aides to Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chair of the committee, have yet to reach a final agreement with the Justice Department on what will be turned over, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the investigations.
On April 20, Kenneth A. Polite Jr., the assistant attorney general for the criminal
division, and Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote to Timothy J. Heaphy, the lead investigator for the House panel, advising him that some committee interviews “may contain information relevant to a criminal investigation we are conducting.”
Polite and Graves did not indicate the number of transcripts they were requesting or whether any interviews were of particular interest. In their letter, they made a broad request, asking that the panel “provide to us transcripts of these interviews, and of any additional interviews you conduct in the future.”
Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the House committee declined to comment.
The Justice Department’s investigation has been operating on a separate track from the committee’s work. Generally, investigators
working on the two inquiries have not been sharing information, except for at times communicating to ensure that a witness is not scheduled to appear before different investigators at the same time, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiries.
Thus far, the Justice Department’s investigation has focused more on lowerlevel activists who stormed the Capitol than on the planners of the attack. But in recent weeks, Garland has bolstered the core team tasked with handling the most sensitive and politically combustible elements of the inquiry.
Several months ago, the department quietly detailed a veteran federal prosecutor from Maryland, Thomas Windom, to the department’s headquarters. He is overseeing the politically fraught question of whether a case can be made related to other efforts to overturn the election, aside from the storming of the Capitol. That task could move the investigation closer to Trump and his inner circle.
A subpoena reviewed by The New York Times indicates that the Justice Department is exploring the actions taken by rally planners.
Prosecutors have begun asking for records about people who organized or spoke at several pro-Trump rallies after the 2020 election as well as anyone who provided security at those events, and about those who were deemed to be “VIP attendees.”
They are also seeking information about any members of the executive and legislative branches who may have taken part in planning or executing the rallies, or tried to “obstruct, influence, impede or delay” the certification of the election, as the subpoena put it.
The Justice Department’s request for transcripts underscores how much ground the House committee has covered, and the unusual nature of a situation in which a well-staffed congressional investigation has obtained testimony from key witnesses before a grand jury investigation.
The committee has obtained documents and testimony from a wide range of witnesses, including more than a dozen Trump White House officials, rally planners and some of the rioters themselves.