House Select Committee On January 6 Insurrection Zeroes In On Trump Crime Family And GQP Congressional Collaborators

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol is zeroing in on the Trump crime family and their insurrectionist coconspirators in the GQP Sedition Caucus who aided and abetted the January 6 MAGA/Qanon failed coup d’etat.

The House Select Committee is doing the job that the FBI and Department of Justice should already have done since January 6. Just sayin’. The DOJ has been going after the low hanging fruit. They should be going after the planners, organizers, promoters, and funders at the top of the food chain, and charged them with seditious insurrection already.

CNN reports, January 6 committee to ask telecommunications companies to preserve phone records of members of Congress who participated in ‘Stop the Steal’ rally:

The House Select Committee investigating the deadly January 6 riot has requested that a group of telecommunications companies preserve the phone records of a group of GOP members of Congress and former President Donald Trump, as well as members of the Trump family, who played some role in the “Stop the Steal” rally that served as the prelude to the Capitol insurrection.

The records request is the first step in the committee’s investigatory process and could signal the direction they plan to go when they call witnesses.

It is unclear what means the committee will use to compel the telecommunications companies to cooperate with their request. The committee does have subpoena power, but requesting the information — especially from members of Congress — could lead to a lengthy legal battle.

The committee did not make public the names of the lawmakers whose records they are targeting. But multiple sources familiar with the committee’s work have confirmed for CNN at least part of list including many of the members of Congress included in the request.

According to the sources, this group was targeted because the committee concluded each of these lawmakers played some role in the “Stop the Steal” rally. They either attended, spoke, actively planned or encouraged people to attend.

The list is said to be evolving and could be added to as the investigation steps up. As of now it includes Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Paul Gosar also of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Jody Hice of Georgia and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania [i.e., the Sedition Caucus].

Wait, why not Sens. Ted “Cancún” Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri who led the insurrection effort in the Senate?

In addition to their connection to the rally, this group also represents some of former Trump’s most loyal supporters in Congress, many of whom continue to peddle Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. Many of these members also voted to object to the election results on the day of the insurrection.

The 147 Republican lawmakers who still objected to the election results even after the Capitol attack. Every one of them should be charged with providing aid and comfort to the violent insurrectionists, and be barred from holding political office ever again. 18 U.S. Code § 2383:

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

A spokesperson for the Select Committee declined to comment on the lawmakers and members of Trump’s family included in the preservation of records request list.

Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, previously said publicly that the committee would be asking for the phone records of “several hundred” individuals. In addition to the members of Congress, CNN has learned the committee will also request the records of the former President be preserved, as well as his daughter Ivanka, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, as well as his daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is Trump Jr.’s girlfriend and worked on the campaign.

The request for the preservation of phone records of certain lawmakers and members of the former President’s orbit were part of a larger preservation request to 35 social media and telecommunication companies including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile, US Cellular and Sprint. The committee also made separate preservation requests to search engine and social media companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Signal, Slack, YouTube, Twitch and Twitter.

The committee is specifically asking companies preserve the records of individuals who could serve as links between those who were involved with organizing or planning the rallies around January 6 and violence committed the day of the insurrection.

The committee is also specifically targeting individuals who have been charged by the Department of Justice or the District of Columbia for their affiliation with the attack and those who were attempting “to challenge, delay, or interfere” with the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

Acknowledging the wide net of preservation requests it has made, the committee wrote, “As the Select Committee continues its work, we anticipate delivering to you document requests for more specific categories of information.” The committee also stated that the request did not assume wrongdoing on the part of those affected.

In its request to Verizon for example, the select committee asks that the cell site location information, call data records and content, cloud or storage content and subscriber information be preserved. The committee also asked that if the company cannot respond to its request without alerting the specific subscriber or account in question to contact the committee directly.

“As Chairman Thompson previewed last week, the Select Committee today sent letters to 35 private-sector entities, including telecommunications, email, and social media companies, instructing them to preserve records which may be relevant to the Select Committee’s investigation. The Select Committee is at this point gathering facts, not alleging wrongdoing by any individual” a spokesperson for the Committee said in a statement.

While asking for the phone records of these individuals may not come as a surprise, there is one notable name not expected to be included in this group of requests. Sources say House Minority Leader “Traitor” Kevin McCarthy’s name was not included. McCarthy notably spoke to the former President during the height of the riot. The contents of that call are expected to be of great interest to the committee. Thompson has repeatedly not ruled out calling McCarthy to testify in front of the committee if that is where the investigation leads. That doesn’t mean that committee will never request his records, they just are choosing not to at this stage of the investigation.

CNN has reached out to the members of Congress on the list for a response, but Republicans have already reacted negatively to the prospect of the committee requesting this information.

The coconspirators, aiders and abettors, and those who gave aid and comfort to the violent insurrectionists on January 6 are now shitting their pants, terrified that their roles in the failed coup d’etat will be publicly exposed and they will be held accountable at law, and forever barred from holding public office.

Last week, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol sought records from agencies on insurrection, Trump in first request for information:

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection issued its first sweeping requests Wednesday for records from federal agencies pertaining to the attack on the Capitol and President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the election.

In letters demanding materials from the National Archives and seven other agencies, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee chairman, signaled that an expansive investigation is underway, touching not only on what happened Jan. 6 but also on matters such as “the former President’s knowledge of the election results and what he communicated to the American people about the election.”

Thompson gave the agencies a two-week deadline to produce materials and asked Archivist of the United States David Ferriero to use his authority under federal regulations to swiftly address the request for records from the Trump White House.

The requests include information on “communications within and among the White House and Executive Branch agencies during the leadup to January 6th and on that day,” as well as on issues further removed, such as “attempts to place politically loyal personnel in senior positions across government after the election.”

Other agencies being asked to provide information are the Defense, Homeland Security, Interior and Justice departments, the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

[In] a statement Wednesday night, Trump said the committee requests were part of a “partisan exercise” and suggested he would try to block them by asserting executive privilege.

The Hill reported, House panel tees up Trump executive privilege fight in Jan. 6 probe: “The threat heightens the possibility for another standoff between Trump and congressional investigators.”

Note: Jonathan Shaub explains:

In an often-overshadowed privilege case involving Richard Nixon, Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, the court held that Nixon, as a former president, had standing to assert executive privilege. The case arose out of a fight for access to the documents and tape recordings of Nixon’s tenure in the White House.

The Supreme Court allowed Nixon, even as a former president, to challenge the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, which applied solely to the Nixon materials, as an unconstitutional infringement of executive privilege. But the core of the court’s reasoning explains only why executive privilege should apply to former presidents’ documents. After recognizing the counterargument that a former president no longer had any role under the Constitution, the court adopted the “sounder” view put forward by the solicitor general that the “privilege survives the individual President’s tenure.” Otherwise, the court reasoned, advisers would not have a sufficient guarantee that their conversations with the president would be kept confidential.

After establishing that the privilege continues to cover the information after the president leaves office, the court in GSA assumed that the former president had some ability to assert executive privilege over that material, but it never explained why. Nor is the question an easy one.

There is considerable weight to the argument that only the current president has the authority to assert executive privilege because the privilege itself derives from Article II of the Constitution and the separation of powers. A former president has no constitutional authority. As the GSA court noted, quoting the solicitor general, “the privilege is not for the benefit of the President as an individual, but for the benefit of the Republic.” The incumbent president is the one who has been elected to represent the interests of the country and is, arguably, the only one with the constitutional authority to determine when disclosure would be in the country’s interests.

The GSA decision largely elides this issue because the court had no opportunity to address the extent of a former president’s authority to assert executive privilege or how the views of the incumbent would factor into such an assertion. The suit did not involve an assertion of privilege over particular information; it was a facial challenge to the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act itself.

It should go without saying that there is no executive privilege to shield the criminal act of waging a violent seditious insurrection and coup d’etat against the United States government to overturn the will of the voters in a fair and free election to prevent the peaceful transfer of power envisioned by the Constitution and dutifully performed for over 230 years. But who knows what a Trump-packed U.S. Supreme Court will do?

Laurence Tribe writes at the Boston Globe, Merrick Garland must investigate Donald Trump’s attempted coup — not for retribution but for deterrence (excerpt):

We need to begin with the fundamental precept that not all crimes are created equal. Those crimes — regardless of who allegedly commits them — whose very aim is to overturn a fair election whereby our tradition of peaceful, lawful succession from one administration to the next takes place — a tradition begun by George Washington, continued by John Adams, and preserved by every president since except Donald Trump — are impossible to tolerate if we are to survive as a constitutional republic.

For nearly all of us, a solid factual basis to believe that one has committed a major federal crime — much less incited an insurrection against the government itself — would trigger serious criminal investigation, typically with a grand jury to ferret out all available evidence. So why the hesitation by the US attorney general to investigate and potentially prosecute when it comes to the former occupant of the Oval Office?

[A]ny president or attorney general who failed to pursue with unrelenting zeal the mission of uncovering and holding perpetrators accountable for crimes fitting within that category, perhaps guided by a tradition of giving past presidents in particular an implicit pass, would not only be derelict in their duty to defend the rule of law, but would be lethally endangering the very survival of the American experiment in self-government.

[My] conclusion: Despite all this, the attorney general should not treat the task of holding those who tried to engineer a coup as anything less than Job One.

In a recent opinion piece in The Washington Post, two former US attorneys and I laid out a roadmap to the criminal investigation we believe must be undertaken — if it hasn’t already been — with respect to every private citizen or public official, whether in Congress or the executive branch, who may have played a role.

No tradition of forbearance can properly shield what tyrants and despots regularly do: invent “votes” to convert defeat into victory, or hold onto office by fabricating claims of corruption after losing in a free and fair election. In the case of Trump, we have all been witness to what looks very much like a veritable “sore loser” crime spree that included pressuring his own Justice Department to “just say the election was corrupt” and let him and his friends in Congress do the rest; insisting that the Georgia secretary of state “just find” the 11,780 votes he needed to put that state’s 13 electoral votes in his column; inciting and giving aid and comfort to the first insurrection against our government fomented by its head; and perhaps engaging in seditious conspiracy.

Trump is not our first president credibly alleged to have committed serious crimes while in office. But even president Richard Nixon’s worst obstructions of justice did not approach the ultimate high crime of seeking to bring down the entire democratic system by which we choose our leaders every four years.

[In] contrast, Trump’s apparent crimes, which he and his supporters openly insist were patriotic acts that they would gladly repeat, have the potential to leave him in power indefinitely. The only antidote is vigorous investigation and prosecution, not for purposes of retribution but for purposes of deterrence.

[T]rump’s relentlessness has laid bare the defects in many of [the Constitution’s] accountability mechanisms. Now Garland stands as the final line of defense for our constitutional democracy. No prior attorney general has confronted so daunting a challenge. For what might be the first time in his life and what will surely be the last, Garland could hold the future of the last best hope on earth in his hands.