Garland may be taking Jan. 6 Capitol riot probe ‘up a notch’

WASHINGTON (CN) — A lawsuit filed this week signaled for the first time that Attorney General Merrick Garland may be investigating former President Donald Trump as part of the Department of Justice’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor who served at the DOJ for 30 years, told Courthouse News that it appears Garland is taking the department’s investigation “up a notch.”

“He’s not just having the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. prosecute the people who were near the Capitol … [or] entered the Capitol,” Rossi said. “It appears that the attorney general is looking at the core people in the White House.”

In an 88-page pro se lawsuit filed by former Trump adviser Peter Navarro, who is not an attorney, he asked a federal judge to block the DOJ from enforcing a grand jury subpoena seeking his testimony and communications with the former president.

The lawsuit was filed in Washington federal court against the House Jan. 6 Committee, but grand jury subpoenas rarely involve targets of investigations — a fact that is fueling speculation that this is a sign the Justice Department may be independently looking for potential Capitol riot-related crimes by the former president and his allies.

But former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told CNS the “more likely possibility” is that Navarro is being investigated for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Jan. 6 committee, same as several other Trump allies.

The Justice Department has so far charged more than 810 people in connection with the Capitol riot. As of May 6, approximately 232 people have pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and 48 have pleaded guilty to felonies.

Despite hundreds of arrests, Garland has faced backlash in recent months from critics who argue he is spending too much time going after low-level defendants, rather than potential high-profile perpetrators who planned the attack.

In January, on the eve of his one-year anniversary as attorney general, Garland said that the Justice Department does “not shy away from cases that are controversial or sensitive or political.”

“To do that would undermine an element of the rule of law that we treat like cases alike without regard to the subject matter,” Garland said.

Though the attorney general refused to say whether he would appoint a special counsel to investigate former President Trump, he vowed to hold “all Jan. 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy.”

Rossi acknowledged the hundreds of Capitol riot defendants who have already been charged, but the longtime DOJ veteran said the most culpable are those at ”1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and at the [Trump] campaign who knew that what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was going to happen.”

While he believes Garland has “tremendous integrity,” Rossi said the attorney general is “not as decisive as he should be.”

Rossi pointed out that prior to becoming the nation’s top prosecutor last year, Garland had served as a circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 1997.

Garland is treating the Justice Department’s investigation of Jan. 6 “like a judge" when he should be treating it like a prosecutor, according to Rossi.

“You have to be aggressive if you’re a prosecutor,” Rossi said. “You can’t be timid. You can’t be indecisive.”

Rossi added that Garland wants to maintain an image of independence from the Biden Administration because he does not want “give the impression that the Department of Justice is political.”

“That’s a very good thing,” Rossi said. “But there are times when he does have to be aggressive, he has to be decisive.”

He continued, “And when it comes to Jan. 6 and what allegedly happened — he has to be.”

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