January 6 panels body of work boosts DoJ case against Trump, experts say | Attack on the US Capitol

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After 18 months of investigating Donald Trump’s drive to overturn his 2020 election defeat, the House committee on insurgency on Jan. 6 gave the Department of Justice a comprehensive legal roadmap as it pursues potential charges. criminal charges against the former US president.

Amid reports that the committee is cooperating with the DoJ by sharing evidence gleaned from 1,000 witness interviews and thousands of documents, former federal prosecutors said the panels’ work offers many evidence to bolster the hard work of DoJ prosecutors investigating the former US president and his top loyalists.

The wealth of evidence against Trump compiled by the panel prompted its unprecedented decision to send the DoJ four criminal referrals for Trump and several top allies regarding their multi-track planning and false claims of fraud to block Joe Biden from office.

While the referrals do not compel the justice department to file charges against Trump or others, the overwhelming evidence gathered by the panel should bolster its investigations, former federal prosecutors said.

The overwhelming evidence compiled by the panel formed the basis for accusing Trump of obstructing an act of Congress, inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the US and making false statements.

The main cause of Jan. 6 was one man, former president Donald Trump, followed by many others, the committee wrote in a detailed summary of its findings days before the release of its final 800-plus-page report on Thursday

The panels blockbuster report concluded that Trump criminally plotted to overturn his 2020 defeat and incited his supporters to violence in the Capitol with baseless claims of massive voter fraud.

Former prosecutors said the committees’ detailed factual presentation should bolster several overlapping DoJ inquiries including a months-long investigation into a fake electors scheme that Trump helped lead along with John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who was also cited. to the justice department for prosecution.

The committee’s Jan. 6 final hearing and lengthy executive summary made a powerful case to support its criminal referrals of Trump, Eastman, and unnamed others, former DoJ inspector general Michael Bromwich said. in the Guardian.

While the referrals carry no legal weight, they provide an unusual preview of potential charges that can be effective in swaying public opinion, Bromwich said.

Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Columbia Law School, also said the panels should have a positive impact on DoJs investigations.

Although the committee’s hearings provided a good preview of the theories of criminal responsibility now laid out in its summary, the new [executive summary] The document does an exceptional job of pulling together the material evidence the committee has developed, Richman told the Guardian.

The committee’s presentation is little more than a call for heads to roll, and amounts to a detailed prosecution memo that the DoJ must deal with.

Other former prosecutors said they agreed. It’s hard to imagine that the DoJ could look at this body of facts and reach a different conclusion, said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan.

While the committee’s referral to the justice department is not binding in any way, and the DoJ will make its own independent assessment of whether charges are appropriate, the most important part of the report is the facts it documents.

The veritable gold mine caught the eye of special counsel Jack Smith, whom attorney general Merrick Garland tapped last month to oversee the DoJ’s wide-ranging criminal inquiries into the Jan. 6 insurgency.

Smith, on Dec. 5, in a letter, asked for all of the committee’s materials related to its 18-month inquiry, as first reported by Punchbowl News.

After receiving the letter, the panel sent the Smiths’ team transcripts and documents, most of which related to Eastman’s key role in promoting a fake electors scheme in conjunction with Trump and others to block the certification of Bidens of Congress.

The House panel also provided the DoJ with all of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ text messages and other relevant evidence.

The committee also shared transcripts of several witness interviews related to the fake electors scheme, along with efforts by Trump and his loyalists to push Georgia and several other states won by Biden to nullification. their results.

According to a report by Politico, the transcripts sent by the panel to the special counsel included interviews with several top lawyers associated with Trump such as former vice-president Mike Pences top legal counsel Greg Jacob, former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, former attorney general Bill Barr , Jeffrey Rosen, who succeeded Barr as AG, and Rosens deputy Richard Donoghue.

Still, there are potential downsides to some of the evidence the panel made public in its wide-ranging inquiry, former prosecutors said.

The massive cache of evidence the committee assembled on Jan. 6 was a mixed blessing for the DoJ, Bromwich said. While this undoubtedly provides evidence that the DoJ has yet to collect or develop, it will take time and resources to master and fully understand its significance.

Above all, it may contain landmines of various kinds for example, witnesses whose public testimony is powerful and clear, but whose initial testimony is incomplete, misleading or false. That doesn’t matter in the context of a Congressional investigation; this is very important when a prosecutor has to decide whether a witness will be vulnerable to attack on cross-examination based on the entire body of their testimony.

Other former prosecutors say panels of exhaustive documentation and witness transcripts should balance the special counsel’s favor.

The committee’s report gives the special counsel not only the benefit of knowing what some witnesses will say, it also lets him know what other witnesses won’t say, said Michael Moore, a former US attorney in Georgia, to the Guardian. This kind of intel gives him the ability to put together a stronger case with fewer surprises. More information is never a bad thing with a good lawyer.

Of the broader legal challenges facing the DoJ, the former prosecutors said the panels should encourage the department to work diligently to investigate and prosecute Trump and others the panel has identified for prosecution. .

Typically, the department quietly makes the big decisions by hiding behind the mantra that it will prosecute cases whenever the facts and law support doing so, Richman said. The public usually has to take their word for it, because it lacks the grain of knowledge to make its own assessment.

Here, while it disagrees with the committees handling the law and the evidence, there will be considerable pressure on the DoJ to bring the specified cases or find a way to explain why not.

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