Members and staff of the Jan. 6 committee are actively preparing for a multi-pronged Republican revenge campaign when the GOP takes over the House next month, anticipating an all-out effort to discredit the panel’s work and punish the its workers, according to current and former workers. staff, as well as other sources informed of the situation.
As the committee prepares its final report, staff are also preparing for its investigation to be investigated, including subpoenas seeking access to a year and a half of his private communications, emails and other documents. the sources said.
“They said [months ago] by a superior to meticulously avoid putting anything in writing or in emails that could one day be used against the committee and our important work,” says one former investigator. “Nothing that can be taken out of context, nothing that can be considered as a kind of “smoking gun” for Jim Jordan and [Marjorie Taylor Greene’s] of Congress”.
Anticipating the GOP attacks, some current and former employees have asked their supervisors whether they should preemptively retain lawyers or at least seek out potential lawyers. Earlier this year, several committee staffers were advised to purchase professional liability insurance in anticipation of an upcoming GOP investigation, according to two sources familiar with the committee’s work. Both sources say they bought it. When Rolling Stone asked them why they decided to buy the insurance earlier this year, one of them said simply, “Because I’m not a jerk.”
Republicans have been open about their plans to go after the panel. According to a source with direct knowledge of the matter, Donald Trump spoke with House Republican allies earlier this year about possible plans to crack down on undisclosed records and communications from the Jan. 6 committee, with the goal of discover dirt or unflattering details. Even, the source said, Trump privately suggested possible avenues of investigation, including investigating whether committee members leaked details to the press or released embarrassing material about the former president and his loyalists. And House Speaker hopeful Kevin McCarthy has publicly signaled his plans to investigate the investigators, part of the party’s ongoing quest to insulate Donald Trump from the Jan. 6 fallout. In a letter dated Nov. 30, McCarthy told the committee to preserve its voluminous records. .
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The committee was already required to preserve its records, with or without McCarthy’s letter. And the committee staff saw it as a glorified press release. One of the sources familiar with the committee’s work added that an irony that has been discussed among some staff is that the “bad faith arguments used by Trump and his allies, including Republican House members, to obstruct the investigation of the select committee could pursue again. them, if they use them the goals of the incoming majority investigations.”
Still, it’s unclear what, exactly, House Republicans will be able to get their hands on if, and more likely when, the party begins to reverse the Jan. 6 committee operations.
“The question is not what can be subpoenaed, but what the committee must hand over to its successor or to the National Archives under House rules,” says Michael Stern, an attorney and former senior House counsel. “It gets murkier if you’re talking about informal staff work products like memos and the like… If the majority coming in think there’s stuff that should have been delivered that wasn’t, or they just want access to certain information, could issue subpoenas or take other steps to gain access to records held by individual members and staff. Their options will depend in part on whether the individuals in question remain members or staff of the House in the next Congress.”
The looming attacks add new pressure to an already tense time for the House committee. The panel’s final stretch has been rocked by internal divisions, according to current and former staff and other sources briefed on the situation.
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There have been leaks, “angry” resignations, internal paranoia, finger-pointing and, above all, bitter disputes over what to include in the final report, sources say. Broadly speaking, there have been divisions between the committee staff working on the investigation and the members of Congress who serve as the panel’s leadership. “The remaining staff seem to trust and like each other enough to carry out their duties efficiently. But the mistrust between management and staff which, surprisingly, has resulted from abundant leaks and appalling mismanagement during the last 18 months has destroyed any goodwill,” a staff member who spoke on condition of anonymity told Rolling Stone.
“There was a time not so long ago when staff would be happy to work 80-hour weeks and take on seemingly insurmountable tasks because the mission was worth it, management be damned,” committee staffers say. “It’s hard to get people to give a shit when the higher ups (management and some members) have routinely screwed up with the people who actually do the research, either by being jerks or just mismanaging this top-down thing.”
The climate of suspicion among members and staff rose after a November story by The Washington Post in which 15 staff members said they felt the committee that committee Vice Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney had ignored or has tried to eliminate important findings about the insurgency that they did not make directly. worries former President Trump. Multiple informed sources confirm to Rolling Stone that a number of current and former staffers at Jan. 6 believe that while the committee carried on with Trump, it too often made it easy for his Republican elite enablers, just as he ignored other conservatives. drivers behind the “election fraud” conspiracy theories that led to the storming of the Capitol.
Sources familiar with the matter also tell Rolling Stone that, ahead of the final report’s expected release this month, several employees have walked out in “angry” resignations, complaining to colleagues and other aides at the Capitol about missed opportunities and the personal perception of committee members. agendas
Some staffers have also begun to lament what they see as fundamental mistakes by committee members in not more aggressively pursuing some witnesses, including Fox News host Sean Hannity. However, according to people with knowledge of the matter, Hannity was left alone by the committee, and was not issued a subpoena, in part because of concerns and possible backlash regarding his First Amendment protections. as a pro-Trump reporter.
The committee initially wrote to Hannity requesting a voluntary interview with the Fox News host. Hannity’s testimony was necessary, they wrote, because he “had prior knowledge of President Trump and his legal team’s planning for January 6” and had “provided[ed] advice” to Trump and his aides about efforts to overturn the election.
Cheney and the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, appeared wary of going after Hannity more forcefully with a subpoena. In their initial letter, the probe’s leaders sought to frame their requests as unrelated to Hannity’s work in journalism and bar questions about “any of your broadcasts or your political views or comments “.
But some staff members now see that cautious approach as a mistake. “[The committee] let him go, but that was the case with many in the Republican Party who should have answered what had happened,” says one of these sources.
Text messages from Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows released by the committee showed Hannity acting as the campaign’s de facto arm after the election, offering advice on matters such as “Directing legal strategies against Biden.”
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The final run follows a very successful summer and fall for the panel, in which it garnered praise and high ratings with a series of hearings offering shocking revelations about Trump’s run-ins with the Secret Service, early warnings about armed Trump supporters and Trump’s comments that Vice President Mike Pence “deserved” threats from MAGA supporters.
Republicans will take control of the House at noon on January 3, 2023.