A new federal court filing from the Justice Department reveals federal prosecutors have received additional evidence from the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot that wasn’t already made public.
This disclosure wasn’t made in connection to investigative efforts led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, although he has also received evidence from the archives assembled by that now former House committee. Rather, authorities outlined the disclosure of evidence in a filing providing tentative opposition to delaying a Capitol riot trial against members of the far-right group the Oath Keepers that for now is scheduled to start at the beginning of February. The government argued that supposed issues with the discovery process, in which relevant information is made available to involved parties ahead of trial, didn’t warrant pushing the trial date further into the future, although prosecutors did note potentially complicating issues with the availability of one of the defendants’ lawyer and possibly necessary delays after one of the defendants transitioned to representing himself.
Plea negotiations also continue. “All of these transcripts were already released publicly by the Committee, though in redacted form, and the government also disclosed exhibits to the transcripts that do not appear to have been released publicly,” the federal filing said. “These materials comprise approximately 30GB of data; however, much of that data consists of voluminous records produced to the committee and appended to certain transcripts.” It appears, then, the panel gave federal prosecutors some of the materials produced by committee witnesses, many of whom cooperated in response to subpoenas. POLITICO provided a brief list of some of the known evidence the panel obtained that wasn’t released publicly, including text convos involving Donald’s daughter and past adviser Ivanka Trump, additional texts from former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, and texts between an aide to Pence and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), the latter of whom remains in office.
Separately, Smith’s investigations — which do not include the individual criminal cases against participants in the Capitol riot — continue moving forward. Developments recently revealed include that at least two former Trump campaign officials received a subpoena seeking communications about the election technology companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, both of which have brought defamation litigation against some of those who spread lies about their involvement in imaginary fraud in the 2020 election. In a long list of other materials, those former campaign officials were also directed to provide information about a series of Trump political and fundraising groups — and the so-called “Election Defense Fund,” which some prospective Trump donors were told their money would go towards, although apparently it didn’t formally exist. A lot of the money that was donated after the 2020 presidential race ended didn’t directly support any court challenges to the election results, either.
