After interviewing nearly 1,000 people, issuing dozens of subpoenas and months and months of behind-the-scenes work, the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is set to hold its first public hearings in less than a month.
The nine-member panel will hold a series of hearings about their efforts to investigate the attack, a brazen attempt by a mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump to block or delay the certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election.
"We’ll tell the story about what happened," Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the panel’s chairman, said. "We will use a combination of witnesses, exhibits, things that we have through the tens of thousands of exhibits we’ve interviewed and looked at, as well as the, you know, hundreds of witnesses we’ve deposed or just talked to in general.”
The nine-member panel, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans — Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill. — has said that it has compiled enough evidence to refer Trump for criminal charges.
“It’s definitely clear that what President Trump was doing,” Cheney said last month on CNN. “What a number of people around him were doing. That they knew it was unlawful. They did it anyway.”
Trump has not been charged with any crime and has denied any wrongdoing. He was impeached by the House of Representatives after the Jan. 6 attack on a charge of Incitement of Insurrection, but was acquitted by the Senate despite 7 Republicans joining all Democrats in voting to convict.
Separately, the Justice Department has conducted its own investigation — one of the largest such probes in its history — which has resulted in roughly 800 criminal charges against those in connection with the attack on the Capitol.
While that includes members of groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers — far-right militia groups accused of coordinating efforts ahead of the attack — nearly all of those charged have been those accused of rioting, not those who allegedly plotted the attack.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has previously said that the Justice Department is pursuing straightforward cases initially in order to create the foundation for more complex cases.
“We build investigations by laying a foundation,” Garland said in January.
But some have criticized the Justice Department of moving too slowly, including members of the Jan. 6 panel — specifically in the case of a referral for criminal contempt charges for Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff on Jan. 6.
"I am concerned that the Mark Meadows referral has not received attention yet,” California Rep. Zoe Lofgren said in an interview with Spectrum News in March, adding: “It’s disappointing there’s been no action.”
"Attorney General Garland, do your job, so that we can do ours," Virginia Rep. Elaine Luria, another member of the panel, said at a meeting of the committee in March.
"We are upholding our responsibility," California Rep. Adam Schiff said at the meeting. "The Department of Justice must do the same.”
Meadows was the second person the House voted to hold in contempt for defying its subpoena, the first being former White House adviser Steve Bannon. A federal grand jury indicted Bannon in November of last year; his trial is scheduled for July. But the Justice Department has not yet charged Meadows. The panel has also recommended contempt charges against former Trump advisers Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro.
Former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori told Spectrum News that Garland’s strategy of building straightforward cases out is “not the only way that the government could approach this investigation, nor is it the only way that the government approaches similar investigations,” citing examples of financial fraud and organized crime probes.
Khardori said he fears the Justice Department is reluctant to probe what role, if any, Trump or his allies had in planning the insurrection in an effort to avoid looking political. The Justice Department declined to comment for this story.
Khardori said the Justice Department must probe events that took place before the riot, such as Trump’s phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the nearly 12,000 votes necessary to overturn Biden’s victory in the state. (Separately, a special grand jury was seated earlier this month in Georgia to probe whether Trump and his allies illegally tried to influence the election in Georgia.)
“That’s the starkest example of where critics such as myself say, you just kind of left these things hanging out there in ways that are not justified in the way the Department proceeds in the ordinary course,” Khardori said.
But others, including Mary McCord, a former Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security, applaud Garland’s methodical approach to the investigation.
The probe, she said, is “moving into that next phase, where they are looking at the connections, the funding, the bigger picture, the bigger conspiracy besides the violence.”
The DOJ's investigation expanded recently to include the planning of the “Stop the Steal” rally ahead of the riot, for example.
“The perception of partisan politics is one the department will want to avoid, but ultimately it won’t prevent the Department from going forward if they have evidence to prove every element of crimes committed,” McCord added.
The Justice Department has asked Congress for an additional $34 million in its budget for FY 2023 for the Jan. 6 investigation.