The Archive

Happy Tuesday afternoon.

Breaking news: The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has begun extensively cooperating with the Justice Department’s special counsel charged with overseeing investigations into former President Donald Trump.

Jack Smith, who Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed as special counsel last month, sent the select committee a letter Dec. 5 requesting all of the panel’s materials from the 18-month probe. Punchbowl News has reviewed Smith’s letter.

Starting last week, the select committee began sending Smith’s team documents and transcripts. Much of the production from the Jan. 6 committee is in relation to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and John Eastman, the Trump lawyer at the center of the “fake elector” scheme.

The select committee has also sent the Justice Department all of Meadows’ text messages and related evidence.

In addition, the House panel shared transcripts of interviews with several witnesses related to the “fake elector” scheme and the efforts by Trump and his allies to pressure states to overturn their election results, specifically in Georgia.

The Jan. 6 committee plans to share additional transcripts and other documents with the special counsel’s office in the coming days, according to the source. Smith was appointed on Nov. 18.

This cooperation represents a new phase in the select committee’s interaction with DOJ.

For months, the panel has declined to share investigative materials with the Justice Department. But with its final report being released Wednesday, the select committee has changed its posture.

The select committee interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses as part of its probe, as well as scouring hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. This information could prove invaluable to federal prosecutors.

The Jan. 6 committee voted Monday to refer Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution on four charges, including inciting or assisting in an insurrection. The panel also referred Eastman for criminal prosecution on two charges, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Smith is tasked with overseeing both the probe into Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and his retention of highly classified documents at his private club in Palm Beach, Fla.

The pace of DOJ’s criminal investigation into the 2020 election has picked up recent months. Federal prosecutors seized the phone of Jeffrey Clark over the summer. Trump considered appointing Clark as acting attorney general to help in trying to overturn the 2020 election, but held off following an uproar from DOJ and White House lawyers.

Subpoenas have been issued to state election officials over the elector scheme, federal investigators have sought to speak to former Vice President Mike Pence and two top attorneys in the Trump White House testified before a grand jury panel earlier this month.

The Jan. 6 committee declined to comment.

– Heather Caygle, Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan