Schiff Issues Warning To Trump That Jan. 6 Committee Will Get Justice

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The House committee investigating the Capitol riot is continuing its work to uncover the true breadth of the circumstances surrounding the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters last January, including the involvement of former President Donald Trump himself. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of that committee, reiterated as much during an appearance on CBS’s Face The Nation over the weekend, where he also revealed that the panel is planning on public hearings beginning “in a matter of weeks, if not a couple of months from now.” So far, the committee has held just one public hearing — featuring a group of police officers who endured the violence, but they’ve privately heard from many others.

Schiff added as follows on CBS:

‘This is really a focal point of our investigation, and that is what was the role of the former president, what was the role of his aides and advisors?.. In terms of the actual violent attack on the Capitol, how much expectation of violence was there? How much was that part of the plan, either spontaneously or in terms of any predisposition towards violence that day? That is still a matter under deep investigation. But we intend to use every effort to get out the full facts and expose them to the American people and take legislative action to protect the country going forward. But that issue, that is, what was the White House role in what happened on the 6th that led to the first violent attack in a century and a half, if not longer, is at the core of our investigation.’

Check out Schiff’s weekend comments below:

That (obviously) means that the investigation is closely focusing on the actions of the former president himself. To that end, investigators are pursuing caches of records from the Trump administration, although they dropped part of their request to other federal interests for certain materials due to concerns that releasing the records could threaten national security — not, as Trump claimed, because of worries about the Bidens being subjected to future investigations. Recent actions by the investigative committee also include a request for information from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a close ally in Congress of former President Donald Trump — with whom Jordan spoke on January 6. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who chairs the riot investigation committee, indicated in a letter to Jordan that the panel wants to ask him about these communications, in addition to topics including pre-January 6 efforts to formulate a plan for overturning Biden’s election victory.

The possibility of issuing a criminal referral targeting Trump for offenses like obstruction of an official proceeding has been circulated, although such a referral from the riot panel would not force the Justice Department to act. Still, any referral would no doubt have a significant amount of evidence behind it, increasing the pressure on officials to bring charges. Thompson said over the weekend that “if there’s anything that we come upon as a committee that we think would warrant a referral to the Department of Justice, we’ll do that.”