- Top Justice Department leaders said the House panel's transcripts could be relevant to prosecutions.
- DOJ previously requested access to the House committee's transcripts in April.
- The House committee is expected to release the transcripts in September.
The House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol has unnecessarily complicated criminal cases with its 'failure' to turn over interview transcripts to prosecutions, the Justice Department said in a letter sent Wednesday to the congressional panel.
With the two-page letter, the Justice Department ratcheted up the pressure on the House committee to release transcripts of the more than 1,000 interviews the congressional panel has conducted during its month-long examination of the Capitol attack and former President Donald Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election.
The Justice Department previously requested transcripts in April, but Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the House January 6 committee, responded that it would be premature for the panel to share its work while its inquiry remains ongoing. In renewing the request for those transcripts, the Justice Department said the committee's interviews could be relevant not only "to our overall criminal investigations, but are likely relevant to specific prosecutions that have already commenced."
"The Select Committee's failure to grant the Department access to these transcripts complicates the Department's ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct in relation to the January 6 attack on the Capitol," Justice Department leaders wrote. "Accordingly, we renew our request that the Select Committee provide us with copies of the transcripts of all the interviews it has conducted to date."
The letter's signatories included Kenneth Polite and Matthew Olsen — the respective heads of the Justice Department's criminal and national security divisions — along with Matt Graves, the US attorney in Washington, DC, overseeing the more than 800 prosecutions stemming from the Capitol attack.
The Justice Department's re-upped request reflected the urgency and wide-ranging nature of the criminal investigation into January 6, an inquiry that has expanded to more closely examine the possible culpability of figures in Trump's orbit who abetted the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Its letter came just days after a split among House January 6 committee members spilled into public view about whether the congressional panel should consider referring Trump or others to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution based on its findings.
Thompson told reporters that making such referrals is "not our job." But Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee's Republican vice chair, tweeted that the panel has "not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals."
This is a developing story.
