(Bloomberg Opinion) -- More than halfway through what might have been an otherwise unremarkable 58-page federal court filing on Wednesday, the bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol makes an explosive accusation: Former President Donald Trump and some of his advisers might be criminals.
Specifically, a sentence on page 39 of the brief reads in part: “Evidence and information available to the Committee establishes a good-faith belief that Mr. Trump and others may have engaged in criminal and/or fraudulent acts.” The committee also says there’s ample proof that Team Trump engineered a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Many advisers, including former Attorney General William Barr, told Trump that no electoral fraud occurred, but he plowed ahead.
In other words, Trump knew what he was doing was wrong and did it anyway — exactly the kind of corrupt intent necessary to prove a crime.
But the committee is a political entity, not a legal one. Its job is to investigate and report, not charge and prosecute. And the Republicans and Democrats who serve on it are familiar with the kabuki accompanying high-stakes investigations such as theirs. Timing and communications matter. So the question is why they have chosen this particular moment to throw down this particular gauntlet.
After all, the committee has been considering televised hearings during prime time in late March or early April. Its painstakingly assembled narrative shows evidence of such electoral crimes as obstructing an official congressional proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. In the committee’s view, Trump’s repeated lies that the election was stolen may also have broken the law. It’s all boffo fodder for spectacular TV ratings. Why not hold back some of its conclusions for its prime-time special?
The answer, I suspect, is that the committee is well aware that the clock is ticking. If Republicans gain control of the House in November, Trumpistas within their ranks are likely to gut the committee. Time is of the essence, especially if the committee’s findings persuade the Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland to pursue criminal charges against Trump and his cohorts. Garland won’t get voted out of office in November, so will have time to advance the committee’s work if he so chooses.
Garland has already been conducting his own investigation of the Jan. 6 siege and prosecuting those involved. In a speech last January, he noted that his office had issued more than 5,000 subpoenas and search warrants, gathered 20,000 hours of video and about 15 terabytes of data. Just this week, a leader of the Oath Keepers militia pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with the probe.
The question is whether Garland will focus entirely on groups such as the Oath Keepers or whether the investigation will move up the chain to possible ringleaders — such as Trump. To be sure, Garland doesn’t owe the public an explanation (yet) about how he’s pursuing the investigation. But if it turns out he decided against pursuing ringleaders, despite the evidence of crimes that has already emerged, he will.
Conspirators in the Jan. 6 attack — the people that Garland has already zeroed in on — have said that Trump inspired them, as this Easter egg (footnote 52) in the committee’s court filing points out: “A number of defendants in pending criminal cases have identified President Trump’s allegations about the ‘stolen election’ as a motivation for their activities at the Capitol; several also specifically cite President Trump’s tweets asking that supporters come to Washington, D.C. on January 6.”
The committee’s filing was related to its effort to secure emails from a Trump adviser and lawyer, John Eastman, the author of an infamous memo suggesting that former Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the tally of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6. Eastman has invoked attorney-client privilege to block the emails’ release. The committee said the privilege should be voided because Eastman was engaged in a criminal conspiracy and his emails from the period around Jan. 6 may offer further evidence of that.
In a tweet on Wednesday evening, the committee said: “The facts we’ve gathered strongly suggest that Dr. Eastman’s emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of electoral college ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power.”
Eastman is hardly the only member of Trump’s inner circle who has tried to stonewall the committee. Steve Bannon and Mark Meadows are notable non-cooperators, too. So another explanation for the committee’s revelation could be that it has simply run out of patience with these tactics, and its filing was a product of that frustration.
But I think that’s a stretch. Thus far the committee has been purposeful, disciplined and unemotional. And it knew the media would find that sentence on page 39 and alert the public to the committee’s belief that Trump may have committed crimes.
The committee also knew that Garland would be paying attention to its court filing. Its message to him: Hurry up.
Related at Bloomberg Opinion:
- The Jan. 6 Committee Should Finish Its Job — Quickly: The Editors
- Tell the Jan. 6 Story to Boost Democracy, Not Democrats: Jonathan Bernstein
- The Jan. 6 Committee Scores a Big Victory Over Trump: Timothy L. O’Brien
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Timothy L. O'Brien is a senior columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.