January 6 committee sends its evidence to special counsel investigating Trump

The House select committee Jan. 6 sent the Justice Department special counsel investigating former President Donald Trump all of his documents and witness transcripts, according to multiple news reports Tuesday.

The panel began sending the evidence to Jack Smith last month after he sent the committee a letter on Dec. 5 requesting all of its materials gathered as part of his 17-month plan. probe, punch bowl News reported.

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

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

The panel, in its recommendations on Monday, recommended that Eastman be indicted along with 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 voters back to the states. Several constitutional experts say the vice president has no such power.

He also had a plan to create fake lists of pro-Trump voters in states that Biden had won.

The House panel sent the Justice Department all text messages from Meadows, transcripts of interviews with various witnesses related to a plan to send voters back to the states and efforts by Trump and his allies to pressure the states to revoke their election results.

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

Federal investigators had a search warrant for the email accounts and cellphones of the three men.

On Monday, the House panel released its executive summary of its findings in the investigation into what happened on January 6 and the factors that led to the insurrection. He is expected to publish his full report on Wednesday.

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

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

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

“People understand that the Democratic Bureau of Investigation, the DBI, wants to stop me from running for president because they know I will win and that this whole business of impeaching me is just like impeachment was: a partisan attempt to marginalize me. and the Republican Party,’ he wrote on the Truth Social platform Monday afternoon.

‘The trumped up charges made by the highly partisan January 6 Impeachment Committee have already been filed, prosecuted and tried in Impeachment Hoax Form #2. I WON convincingly. Double jeopardy for anyone!’ she added.

House officials, in their 17 months of investigation, collected more than 140,000 documents and conducted more than 1,000 interviews with Trump aides, rioters and officials they claim were directly or indirectly involved in the riots.