The Washington Post revealed that the Department of Justice and the FBI were resistant to opening a probe into Donald Trump for Jan. 6 for over a year, but reporter Carol Leonnig told MSNBC on Monday they were finally shamed into acting when the House Select Committee launched an investigation into the insurrection.
Leonnig began by explaining that between her and her co-author, they interviewed more than 100 people – and many had assumed that the DOJ was already involved in a Jan. 6 investigation. What her report revealed was that, at the time, it wasn't.
She said the reluctance was because the FBI was afraid of Donald Trump because so many people had lost their jobs or careers because of the FBI's probe into Trump and alleged Russia connections during the 2016 election.
At the same time, she said, the DOJ was scared that if it went after the Jan. 6 attacks it would appear as if it was going after the Republican Party because so many Republicans were involved.
"Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco embraced the strategy of let's do it like a mob case," Leonnig said. "Build up from the riot. Figure out if there's somebody higher and higher and higher and perhaps it will lead to those individuals around Donald Trump. Perhaps not. Let's let the evidence lead us up that ladder.
"The problem is there is no ladder between militia members, the Oath Keepers, and the Proud Boys wearing flak jackets and bullet-proof vests and carrying bear spray and emails to Mark Meadows or Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani about convincing state officials to help them create fake electors to swing the election for Trump and away from Biden.
"As it started to emerge in the summer and especially the fall of 2022, still, the DOJ sort of turned its eyes away from this until it became a drumbeat of criticism, news stories, some of them on this story and some of them in my paper. And a groundswell of concern that the Jan. 6th committee was really without the same kind of power as the Department of Justice uncovering stunning and worrisome and, likely criminal acts," she continued.
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace pointed to the important explanation she gave about missing the links between the militias and the White House.
"But it was also true that Trump committed crimes in plain sight," she said. "He committed the crime of blocking an official proceeding. Even with the limits to their investigative powers, he committed the crimes of insurrection. I mean, there were criminal acts that were ignored."
Leonnig said that inside the Justice Department, there are a lot of prosecutors that were more disheartened than angry about Jan. 6 going un-investigated. She said that there were many at the DOJ that were pressing to investigate the fake electors' scandal. It was even referred to the DOJ by the attorney general of Michigan. Still, the DOJ took a full year and four months before it acted.
"I think that another really important thing, Nicolle, which you have really zeroed in on over and over again is the Jan. 6th committee's work," Leonnig continued. "The Department of Justice has said to us, in different ways, this committee didn't influence us at all. Except when you interview people who were right in the thick of it, they said, 'Look, we were embarrassed and goaded into it.'"
It was the work of the Jan. 6 committee that made it impossible for the DOJ to justify its bottom-up strategy, she said.
Leonnig also said that the FBI is refusing to comment on the piece, answer questions about the decisions around Jan. 6, and blocked any of the principal decision-makers from giving a statement. The reporting on the FBI's resistance to investigate comes after it was revealed the FBI was told Jan. 6 was going to be violent, but did nothing to stop it.
Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor under Robert Mueller, explained that there is a philosophy that still persists among some in law enforcement: "Little cases, little problems. No cases, no problems. Big cases, big problems."
See the full conversation in the video below or at the link here.