(RepublicanInformer.com)- The House January 6 investigating committee is asking for a lot of people, agencies and organizations to cooperate with them, but they apparently are unwilling to cooperate with others.
Recently, the panel said it isn’t yet ready to cooperate with the Department of Justice in its own investigation of the events of January 6, 2021.
The DOJ asked the committee to share interview transcripts it has conducted. But, the committee’s chairman, Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson, said they wouldn’t do so until they were finished the inquiry that they are conducting.
He explained recently:
“It’s our work product. It’s the committee’s work product. We’re in the midst of our work.
“If they want to come and talk, just like we’ve had other agencies to come and talk, we’d be happy to talk to them, but we can’t give them access to our work product at this point.”
Thompson made those comments on Tuesday, the same day that he revealed publicly that the committee is unlikely to seek testimony from former President Donald Trump himself. While the panel has spoken with some high-ranking officials within the Trump White House, as well as some of Trump’s children, they aren’t convinced that actually getting Trump himself to testify would add any value to their investigation.
Thompson said this week that the panel isn’t quite sure whether a testimony from the former president would add any “value” for the decision-making process of the committee.
Just last week, the House panel sent new subpoenas to five high-profile members of the GOP that it believes each played a crucial role in the events of January 6 of 2021. One of those politicians is House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
In addition to McCarthy, Republicans Representatives Mo Brooks from Alabama, Jim Jordan from Ohio, Scott Perry from Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs from Arizona all received subpoenas from the committee.
Thus far, none of them have said they were going to cooperate with the investigation.
That might not be a surprise at all to any of the committee members, though. As Washington Post congressional investigations reporter Jackie Alemany told MSNCB this week:
“I’m not sure the select committee believes that any of these members are actually going to appear. But, what they communicated to reporters yesterday was after, really, months of deliberation, that they felt like they needed to give congressmen and House Minority Leader McCarthy — this full group — the opportunity to respond to evidence that they had found throughout the investigation.
“They had already issued voluntary requests for McCarthy, Scott Perry [and] Jim Jordan months ago, actually at the end of last year, and had let those requests linger for quite some time.”
At the same time that the House panel is conducting its investigation, the DOJ is conducting one of its own. Merrick Garland, the attorney general, said back in March that their investigation was the “most urgent” one in the history of the DOJ.
Thus far, the DOJ has charged more than 800 people for their individual roles on January 6, 2021.
