January 6 committee sends its evidence to special counsel investigating Trump

The House Jan. 6 select committee has sent the Justice Department’s special counsel investigating former President Donald Trump all of their documents and witness transcripts, according to multiple news report on Tuesday.

The panel began sending the evidence to Jack Smith last month after he sent the committee a letter on December 5th requesting all of their materials gathered as part of their 18-month probe, Punchbowl News reported.

Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to serve as special counsel for all Trump-related matters, including the former president’s actions in relation to the January 6. 2021 insurrection and the allegations he had classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago home.

The January 6th committee is cooperating with the Justice Department’s special counsel investigating Donald Trump

The committee has sent its evidence to Jack Smith, who was appointed special counsel to look into Donald Trump’s actions on January 6th and the documents at Mar-a-Lago

See also  I used to work for British Rail, so I can tell you how awful it was... Don't let anyone pretend nationalisation is some kind of panacea, writes ROSS CLARK

Much of the information the panel sent over is related to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows and attorney John Eastman, the report says.

The panel, in its recommendations on Monday, recommended that Eastman be charged alongside Trump for trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. 

Eastman had argued that Mike Pence, in his ceremonial role as vice president, could send electors back to the states. Several constitutional experts say the vice president has no such power. 

He also had a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states that Biden had actually won.

The House panel has sent DoJ all of Meadows’ text messages, transcripts of interviews with several witnesses related a scheme to send electors back to the states, and the efforts by Trump and his allies to pressure states to overturn their election results.

The Justice Department already have examined more than 100,000 documents seized from the email accounts Eastman and two former Justice Department lawyers, Jeffrey Clark and Ken Klukowski, who were may have played a role in the fake elector’s scheme.

Federal investigators had a search warrant for the three men’s email accounts and their cell phones.

Much of the information the panel sent over is related to attorney John Eastman (left with Trump) and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows (right)

Donald Trump on January 6th, 2021, at a rally on the ellipse

On Monday the House panel released its executive summary of its findings in its probe of what happened on January 6th and the factors that led to the insurrection. It is expected to release its full report on Wednesday. 

The nine-members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack voted unanimously to refer the former president to the Justice Department on charges of inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an act of Congress, and conspiracy to make a false statement. 

The panel also referred Eastman for criminal prosecution on two charges, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. 

Trump, in response, claimed to be the victim of Democrats who don’t want him to run for the White House again – because he’d win.

‘The people understand that the Democratic Bureau of Investigation, the DBI, are out to keep me from running for president because they know I’ll win and that this whole business of prosecuting me is just like impeachment was — a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party,’ he wrote on the Truth Social platform on Monday afternoon.

‘The Fake charges made by the highly partisan Unselect Committee of January 6th have already been submitted, prosecuted, and tried in the form of Impeachment Hoax # 2. I WON convincingly. Double Jeopardy anyone!,’ he added. 

House officials, in its 18 months of investigation, collected more than 140,000 documents, and conducted more than 1,000 interviews with Trump aides, rioters and officials who they claim were directly or indirectly involved in the riot.