Latest in Jan. 6: Congress
If the committee wants to hold public hearings on its findings, it will have to start moving more quickly.
It’s been four months since the House asked the Justice Department to seek Meadows’s indictment. Are the department’s misguided precedents holding things up?
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in the case Trump v. Thompson, denying Donald Trump's motion to block the National Archives from producing his documents to the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. To drill down, Natalie Orpett talked with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson and Professor Jonathan Shaub of the University of Kentucky College of Law.
A crucial component of the story of Jan. 6 involves what members of Congress were doing on that day. What kinds of conversations did Republican lawmakers have with President Trump? To what extent did any members of Congress play a role in engineering the riot itself? These are some of the questions that the House committee on Jan. 6 is investigating—and it’s seeking information directly from members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Today on Lawfare No Bull: On Tuesday, Jan. 11, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the threat of domestic terrorism facing our nation, one year after the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The hearing included testimonies from Matthew Olsen, Assistant Attorney General in the National Security Division of the Department of Justice and Jill Sanborn, Executive Assistant Director of the National Security Branch of the FBI:
The Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General, in a controversial new report, offered unabashed praise of military leaders for their reaction to the “chaotic and confusing situation” on Jan. 6.
The oral argument took hours. The result is not hard to predict.
A federal grand jury indicted former Trump adviser Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress on Nov. 12. The indictment lists two counts for Bannon’s failure to testify before the Jan. 6 House select committee and for a failure to produce documents after receiving a subpoena for both.
The contempt case against Bannon is actually more complicated than it looks.
The Jan. 6 committee should not rush to hold Mark Meadows in contempt. It should instead take the time to develop a record that leaves him no wiggle room to hide behind the ambiguities inherent in executive privilege.