The house has set a high bar for showing criminality
The Joint Committee of the Judiciary Committee on the Investigation of a White House Appropriate-Dependent-Commission-Membership Corrupt Practice
The task of determining whether anyone broke the law is never mentioned in the resolution that led to the creation of the committee in June 2021. According to a House resolution, its main goal is to identify failures by law enforcement and other causes of violence in order to make sure that it never happens again.
Two contempt of Congress prosecutions have been given by the committee because of the failure to comply with subpoenas. The Justice Department has brought contempt charges against two former aides to the president.
Many of the staff members of the committee were once prosecutors, so they use a strategy to highlight a range of potential crimes at the public hearings.
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Other hearings focused on whether Mr. Trump and his aides committed the crimes of defrauding the American people or obstructing an official proceeding of Congress. The members asked if Mr. Trump or his aides committed witness tampering.
We want to ensure that we tell the full truth, allow government officials to make changes to the system, and improve our guardrails so we can make better decisions about who they choose.
The steps that are designed to disrupt the joint session of Congress start to sound like criminal conduct when we see them. The special counsel has to have intent. The more evidence that we saw of the president’s intent, and others working with him, to take steps — without basis in fact or law — to prevent the transfer of power from happening, it started to feel more and more like possible criminal conduct.
The Department of Justice is similar to The Hill. A grand jury is a secret process. And it doesn’t help an investigation when every step you take is reported. I mean, there were days when we would interview a witness and literally 30 minutes later, there’s Luke Broadwater on TV saying the select committee interviewed the witness. And that makes it really difficult because there were times when people would say, “Well, my client would like to help the committee, but she’s concerned that if she does, then she’ll immediately be outed as a turncoat.” So the public nature, the scrutiny under which we operated, was not helpful, and it made it more difficult for us to earn the trust and confidence of people.
The committee hired James Goldston, who’s the former president of ABC He brought in a bunch of producers. So there was this collaboration of lawyers and producers. That was a combination of skills that I don’t know if Congress had seen before.