The Justice Department is reportedly beefing up its team investigating the Jan. 6 riots and former President Donald Trump‘s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The man leading the sweeping operation announced in an officewide email that he is drafting in a leading public prosecutor to help with the investigation.
U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves, the head of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia, reportedly asked public corruption section chief J.P. Cooney to assist with “some of the investigatory efforts” connected to the Capitol riot inquiry last week, according to Business Insider. Prosecutor John Crabb is also reportedly leaving his position as chief of the office’s criminal division to focus more intently on Jan. 6 cases.
Cooney was involved in the DOJ’s recent successful case against former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, and Cooney and Crabb were both involved in the Justice Department’s controversial actions related to sentencing longtime Trump ally Roger Stone in early 2020. Cooney was also part of the team that declined to charge fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for allegedly lying to investigators about authorizing media disclosures.
SPIKE IN DOMESTIC TERRORISM CASES IS TIED TO CAPITOL RIOT
Graves signed the indictment against Bannon, and Cooney was among the prosecutors in the case charging Trump’s top ally with two counts of contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots. Bannon was found guilty last month.
Stone was found guilty in November 2019 on five separate counts of lying to the House Intelligence Committee during its investigation into Russian interference about his alleged outreach to WikiLeaks in 2016, one count that he “corruptly obstructed” the investigation and another for attempting to intimidate a possible congressional witness.
Prosecutors told the court in February 2020 that they recommended Stone receive up to nine years behind bars. But after Trump tweeted that he “cannot allow this miscarriage of justice,” the Justice Department suggested a less severe sentence. The four prosecutors on the case withdrew as the department walked back the “unduly high” sentence recommendation and as it suggested three to four years instead — but left it up to the court.
Stone was ultimately sentenced to 40 months in prison. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence in 2020.
It comes after the Department of Justice said last week that more than 850 defendants had been arrested in relation to the Capitol riot, including over 260 charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. Members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have been hit with seditious conspiracy charges and have pleaded not guilty.
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“The Justice Department would always like additional resources and would be happy to take them, but we are gonna accomplish our mission here,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in July when asked if he needed more resources to investigate Jan. 6. “The people in the Justice Department are committed to this. They are working 24/7 on this.”
Garland also called it “the most wide-ranging investigation and the most important investigation” the Justice Department has ever conducted.
