CNN legal analyst Elie Honig urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to get tough on Trump administration officials if they defy subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the Capitol riots.
During an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett, Honig predicted that former Trump officials and henchmen such as Steve Bannon would try to run out the clock until next November, when they hope a new Republican majority could sweep into power and shut down the committee.
"The thing is, Erin, it has worked for Donald Trump and his people before," Honig explained. "If you look at when Congress tried to investigate after the Mueller report when they tried to investigate the first impeachment over Ukraine, these things got bogged down in the courts. And they took months, even years. And as a result, Congress really got next to nowhere with those investigations."
The key, said Honig, would be whether the United States Department of Justice would take an active role in enforcing these subpoenas.
"Are people like Merrick Garland willing to make bold and courageous and really unusual decisions?" he asked. "Nobody has been charged criminally for about 50 years under contempt of Congress. The last several times these decisions have come to DOJ, they've passed. Well, is Merrick Garland just going to say this is the way it's always been done, it is the easier way out, or is he going to stand up for accountability and full disclosure here?"
Watch the video below.