As the House Select Committee pursues its investigation into the Jan. 6 pro-Trump attack on the U.S. Capitol in a failed effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, several former Trump administration officials have defied subpoenas, refusing to testify about their role in the insurrection. Those officials include former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, his Deputy Dan Scavino and former Chief White House strategist Steve Bannon. Although the House voted to hold these men in contempt of Congress, it is unclear whether or not the U.S. Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland will move to prosecute these men. It’s also unknown if the Justice Department has launched any investigations into potential federal criminal or civil violations that may have been committed by former President Trump during his four years in office.
There is a growing body of evidence that the planning of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection involved members of Congress and key White House officials. As recounted in an Oct. 24 Rolling Stone magazine article, these legislators and their aids who were involved in the planning were promised a presidential pardon by far-right Rep. Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Ron Fein, legal director with the group Free Speech For People, who discusses his concerns regarding the House and U.S. Justice Department investigations into the pro-Trump Jan. 6 coup attempt, given his belief that to restore the rule of law, it is essential that officials who broke the nation’s laws must be held accountable.
RON FEIN: Well, we were happy to see these investigations launched. We’re extremely disappointed in their progress — or lack of progress and worry that if greater action is not taken soon, that we’re going to have a replay in the next election if not sooner. And to put a fine point on that, the Department of Justice in particular has been going after the low-level individuals who stormed the Capitol — the person wearing the hat with horns and the guy with the cattle prod. But they have not gone after any of the high-level officials that facilitated and helped organize this, whether they were in the White House, whether they were in Trump’s command center at a hotel, not far from the Capitol.
And as just one example, we learned in a Rolling Stone article from a few days ago that some of the planners of these events met repeatedly with members of Congress and their key aides and with the White House chief of staff in the days leading up to Jan. 6. We shouldn’t be learning about this from Rolling Stone. We should be learning about this from indictments. And the Department of Justice has more investigative tools available to it than the reporters at Rolling Stone. And the amount of time that’s passed since Jan. 6th without going after top officials has allowed Trump and his inner circle to attempt to repaint the story and tell it in a different way, to make it seem like something very different from what actually happened. So unless the attorney general steps up really quickly, we’re in danger of letting the top officials who planned and promoted and facilitated this, get away with insurrection.
SCOTT HARRIS: We view for our listeners, a letter, your organization recently wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging him to investigate Donald Trump’s criminal or civil violations of the law that may have been committed during his presidency. And there’s plenty to pick from all the news reports we have over the past four to five years. What’s been the response from the attorney general’s office? What do we know about any taskforce that has been assigned to investigating Trump and violations of law?
RON FEIN: We called upon Attorney General Garland even before he was able to take his position to establish an independent task force at the outset that would have centralized coordination jurisdiction over all investigations related to Trump and his inner circle. And those could fall into a broad range of categories because unfortunately, Donald Trump’s potential criminal violations are many. Some of them go back so many years that they might be outside the statute of limitations, but you’ve got everything ranging from his campaign finance violations, Michael Cohen, who named him as having directed him in illegal campaign financing for which Michael Cohen actually went to prison. And the government referred to Trump as Individual One, is one category. We’ve got potential crimes related to bribery and other forms of improper financial influence coming from the way that payments were made coming from just the earliest days of his presidency, regarding everything from Chinese trademarks, to stays at Trump hotels.
And of course, the events of Jan. 6th, have to loom largest. And not just Jan. 6, but the entire course of conduct — from the November 2020 election and Trump’s efforts to try and get state officials to falsify results and his attempts to tamper with the normal processes that happen in the states. What Garland should have done was establish a task force at the outset, name who’s in charge of it, and then say, and I’m going to step away from that and let that taskforce work as it will. And the benefit that would have come if Garland had done that, is that on the one hand, it would show that the Department of Justice was serious and was actually looking into these matters. But on the other hand, it would also say that Garland who is, of course, a political appointee, was not going to be micromanaging it and that would give it some increased credibility so that it wouldn’t look like it was a politically motivated type of investigation.
Unfortunately, Garland hasn’t done any of that. And so, as far as we can tell from public records, nothing has happened. Now that doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be something moving very slowly under the surface behind the scenes. But we’re not aware of any federal criminal investigations of Trump or of his closest associates. And that’s extremely concerning.
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