On January 6, 2021, the chairman of the House Select Committee investigating the attack on the Capital, Rep. Benny Thompson, D-Miss, speaks to the media on Capitol Hill on Thursday, June 16, 2022, following a committee hearing.
Jacqueline Martin / AP
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Jacqueline Martin / AP
On January 6, 2021, the chairman of the House Select Committee investigating the attack on the Capital, Rep. Benny Thompson, D-Miss, speaks to the media on Capitol Hill on Thursday, June 16, 2022, following a committee hearing.
Jacqueline Martin / AP
The Justice Department has asked the chief investigator for this House January 6 Selection Committee In order to gain quick access to the transcripts of witness interviews, the ongoing criminal investigation is complicated by the lack of information exchange.
Top DOJ officials renewed the first request in April – before the panel began a blockbuster public hearing in which they quoted from prosecutors’ court documents and played a video showing defendants in a treason cut case brought by the department against the far-right Proud Boys. Group.
The committee will rotate the transcript “in due course,” but not over the weekend, Chair Benny Thompson told reporters after Thursday’s hearing.
“We will work with them, but we have a report,” he said. “We will not stop what we are doing to share the information we have so far with the Department of Justice.”
In a letter dated June 15 from the U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., and the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department of Criminal and National Security, the transcripts will be important to help prosecutors assess the credibility of those they consider witnesses or subjects of investigation. .
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Matthew Graves, Kenneth Polit and Matthew Olsen wrote, “The grand jury investigation is not public and thus the identification of all witnesses with information related to the department’s ongoing investigation is not known to the selection committee.”
The recipient of the letter is Timothy Hefey, the committee’s chief investigative adviser and former U.S. attorney during the Obama administration.
The delay in accessing the transcripts complicates the current Justice Department’s criminal investigation, which is the largest and most complex in history, DOJ officials said.
At least two Proud Boy defendants facing charges of treason and other charges have cited a congressional hearing as the basis for postponing their criminal case in Washington, D.C., from early August until mid-term elections this year.
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House investigators have so far refused to give the transcript to the DOJ but instead said it would be released in large numbers in early September as the committee completes its work and publishes the final report.
The judge has not yet ruled on Proud Boys’ request for a stay of the trial and is expected to hold a hearing on Wednesday to discuss the adjournment.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullo agrees to delay filing in new court.
“While we do not know when copies of the transcripts will be released, if they are released as expected in early September 2022, the parties in this case will have to face unique bias as the jury in the August 8 trial will have already sworn in,” he said in court documents filed on Thursday. Wrote.
With additional report from Lexie Schapitl