Attention to the Unseen

Quinta Jurecic and Natalie K. Orpett write: As the Jan. 6 committee continues to build its case for Donald Trump’s criminal culpability regarding the Capitol insurrection, the Justice Department has come under increasing criticism for its failure to take public action against the former president. Rep. Adam Schiff, who sits on the Jan. 6 committee, commented on MSNBC that “it is unprecedented for Congress to be so far out ahead of the Justice Department in a complex investigation.” According to…

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Politico reports: The Jan. 6 select committee once envisioned a single month packed with hearings. Then a fire hose of evidence came its way — and now its members have no interest in shutting or even slowing the spigot. As its summer hearings show some signs of chipping at Donald Trump’s electoral appeal, select panel members describe Thursday’s hearing as only the last in a series. Committee members, aides and allies are emboldened by the public reaction to the information…

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The Washington Post reports: The U.S. Secret Service has determined it has no new texts to provide Congress relevant to its Jan. 6 investigation, and that any other texts its agents exchanged around the time of the 2021 attack on the Capitol were purged, according to a senior official briefed on the matter. Also, the National Archives on Tuesday sought more information on “the potential unauthorized deletion” of agency text messages. The U.S. government’s chief record-keeper asked the Secret Service…

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Rolling Stone reports: When Donald Trump formally declares his 2024 candidacy, he won’t just be running for another term in the White House. He’ll be running away from legal troubles, possible criminal charges, and even the specter of prison time. In recent months, Trump has made clear to associates that the legal protections of occupying the Oval Office are front-of-mind for him, four people with knowledge of the situation tell Rolling Stone. Trump has “spoken about how when you are…

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Barbara McQuade writes: The next Jan. 6 committee hearing — a prime-time finale after seven previous hearings — is expected to focus even more intently on what was happening inside the White House during the insurrection. I will be listening for evidence of a crime that has gone largely undiscussed: manslaughter. Five people died in the Jan. 6 attack. Officer Brian Sicknick sustained a fatal stroke a day after rioters sprayed him with a chemical irritant. Air Force veteran Ashli…

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The New York Times reports: Around 5 in the afternoon on Christmas Day in 2020, as many Americans were celebrating with family, President Donald J. Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., on the phone with a little-known conservative lawyer who was encouraging his attempts to overturn the election, according to a memo the lawyer later wrote documenting the call. The lawyer, William J. Olson, was promoting several extreme ideas to the president. Mr. Olson later conceded…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: The Justice Department is adding prosecutors and resources to its investigation into the actions of former President Donald Trump’s allies to overturn the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the matter, as the related congressional hearings have turbocharged interest in Mr. Trump’s own role in that effort. A Justice Department team focusing on elements of the investigation beyond the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has in recent weeks been given more…

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The Intercept reports: The Secret Service erased text messages from January 5 and January 6, 2021, according to a letter given to the January 6 committee and reviewed by The Intercept. The letter was originally sent by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General to the House and Senate homeland security committees. Though the Secret Service maintains that the text messages were lost as a result of a “device-replacement program,” the letter says the erasure took place shortly…

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Donald Ayer, Stuart Gerson, and Dennis Aftergut write: After seven hearings held by the January 6 committee thus far this summer, doubts as to who is responsible have been resolved. The evidence is now overwhelming that Donald Trump was the driving force behind a massive criminal conspiracy to interfere with the official January 6 congressional proceeding and to defraud the United States of a fair election outcome. The evidence is clearer and more robust than we as former federal prosecutors—two…

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Politico reports: The Jan. 6 select committee plans to make its most complex case yet at its public hearing Tuesday: that Donald Trump’s words and actions influenced extremists and brought them to the steps of the Capitol. “Be there. Will be wild,” Trump tweeted on Dec. 19, 2020, barely two weeks before a mob seeded with members of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers besieged the Capitol and threatened the transfer of power to Joe Biden. That tweet will…

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Andrew Weissmann writes: The tenacious work of the Jan. 6 committee has transformed how we think about the Jan. 6 rebellion. It should also transform the Justice Department’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Before the hearings, federal agents and prosecutors were performing a classic “bottom up” criminal investigation of the Jan. 6 rioters, which means prosecuting the lowest-ranking members of a conspiracy, flipping people as it proceeds and following the evidence as high as it goes. It…

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Bob Bauer and Benjamin Wittes write: In the wake of Cassidy Hutchinson’s extraordinary testimony before the Jan. 6 Select Committee, a number of commentators have been considering how her account will and should affect judgments about the merits of any potential criminal prosecution of the former president. A preliminary question for prosecutors concerns the strength of the evidence of the president’s criminal intent as it affects the application of the relevant statutes, such as obstruction of a congressional proceeding or…

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