Dem
51
GOP
49
On Monday, the Select Committee politely asked the Dept. of Justice to kindly indict Donald Trump on four charges. The DoJ will politely ignore this advice and make its own decisions. However, everything is going to change (probably today) when the Committee releases its full report, expected to be eight chapters and run to 1,000 pages. Some of that is material the DoJ does not have and is keenly interested in.
But the really big reveal will be when the Committee hands over the transcripts from over 1,200 people it interviewed, along with millions of pages of documents it collected. It's this raw information that Special Counsel Jack Smith desperately wants and will soon get. What Smith needs to know is whether there is hard evidence that Donald Trump, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani and others committed federal felonies. The transcripts and documents could hold the evidence as witnesses told the Committee what they saw these gentlemen say and do. This is what really matters, not the big public show on Monday.
Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) has also implied that the transcripts and documents will also go up on the Government Publishing Office's website, so thousands of amateur detectives can pore over it and pull out and draw attention to hidden gems. What hasn't been decided yet is what to do with the videos of the interviews. Some of them may contain private information or national security secrets that cannot be published. Also, some witnesses testified only after they were granted a promise of anonymity. Some call records also contain private information and cannot be published. It may take some work to vet this massive trove of information and that may not be complete for a few weeks. Presumably by handing everything over to the GPO and letting it figure out what has to remain private, that will prevent the incoming House from redirecting the entire collection to the paper shredder.
Once most of the transcripts are public, there will be intense scrutiny of some of them. The Committee itself cast doubts on the testimony of former Secret Service member Tony Ornato, former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. This is a lawyer-speak for "it is plain that they lied through their teeth." The DoJ might just dust off some musty old perjury laws and offer the people in question another opportunity to do some bean spilling before being indicted.
Another point is that some of the key witnesses decided not to show up after receiving subpoenas. Others took the Fifth Amendment. The DoJ takes a dim view of people who don't show up, and can order the sheriff to corral recalcitrant witness and bring them in for a chat, even if the witnesses have other plans. It can also grant witnesses immunity, which largely removes their right to invoke the Fifth Amendment, since the grant means the government may not use what they say under oath at a trial against them. The DoJ can also get search warrants and empanel grand juries to investigate difficult witnesses. This may also apply to sitting members of the House who refused to obey subpoenas from the Committee. They have far less authority to ignore a subpoena from the DoJ about a criminal case.
The transcripts and documents will be an enormous Christmas present for the DoJ, which has been trying for months to acquire the material. However, it could take Smith weeks, or even months, to go through everything to see what he can use. (V)