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| Photo Credit: AP. |
The Justice Department has expressed rage over its ability to obtain transcripts of witnesses who testified at the House select committee investigating the January 6 siege on the US capitol. The DOJ had earlier expressed frustration at the refusal of the January panel to release full witness transcripts.
On Thursday the Justice Department lamented of the panel’s “failure”
to share its 1,000 witness transcripts, according to Politico.
DOJ officials said the requested documents would aid the
prosecution of people who breached the Capitol, including leaders of the Proud
Boys – a white supremacy group.
“The Select Committee’s failure to grant the Department
access to these transcripts complicates the Department’s ability to investigate
and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct in relation to the January
6 attack on the Capitol,” the department wrote in a letter Wednesday, signed by
Criminal Division chief Kenneth Polite Jr. and National Security Division head
Matthew Olsen, as well as the U.S. attorney for D.C., Matthew Graves, Politico
reports.
According to Politico, the Justice Department officials said
it was “critical” that the panel provide prosecutors “copies of the transcripts
of all its witness interviews.”
The House committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson
(D-Miss.), said his panel would complete the task at hand - the hearings which
started last week and is ongoing, adding
that the panel would produce a report. He stressed that the panel wants to help
the Justice Department in its drive to serve justice on the misguided Trump
supporters who invaded the Capitol, adding that the committee would finally
cooperate with the Justice Department.
“We’re in the midst of conducting our hearing. … We have a
report to do. So, we’re not going to stop what we’re doing to share information
that we’ve gotten so far with the Department of Justice,” Thompson said,
according to Politico “We will eventually cooperate with them.”
Last month Thompson said some of the requests of the Justice
Department went too far.
“My understanding is they want to have access to our work
product. And we told them, no, we’re not giving that to anybody,” he said last
month, according to Politico.
Prosecutors Thursday agreed to delay a scheduled August
triall of the leadership of the Proud Boys, a pro-Trump military facing
seditious conspiracy charges over their role in the violent siege on Congress.
The delay according to the Justice Department would allow the House panel to make
the witness interview transcripts public in September which could provide the much
needed evidence for the trial to begin.