Trump's Jan. 6 conspiracy 'potentially broader' than final House report described: lead investigator

According to the lead investigator who worked for House select committee looking into the Jan. 6 insurrection, the final report on their findings may have only scratched the surface when describing how broad the conspiracy went to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

In an interview with the New York Times’ Luke Broadwater, Timothy J. Heaphy described the work they put in and where they came up short primarily due to allies of Donald Trump refusing to either testify or balking at answering some questions.

According to Heaphy, there is evidence of a broader conspiracy that went beyond Trump and other investigation targets, including Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Speaking with Broadwater, he explained, "There’s evidence that the specific intent to disrupt the joint session extends beyond President Trump," before adding, "I think that the Justice Department has to look very closely at whether there was an agreement or conspiracy."

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Continuing in that vein he elaborated, "But there’s a lot of evidence that we didn’t get. Mr. Meadows didn’t come and talk to us. We did interview Mr. Giuliani, but he asserted attorney-client privilege a lot. John Eastman cited the Fifth Amendment to everything. So a lot of that decision by Justice will depend upon their ability to go beyond what we did."

According to the investigator, a grand jury should take up the investigation because it has the enforcement power to go where the House committee could not.

"The grand jury may be able to get answers that we didn’t get, and I hope that they do. How broad the conspiracy extends, I don’t know. But it’s potentially broader than even the people that we mentioned," he explained.

He then added that the House hearings seem to have spurred the DOJ to move more quickly on investigating the Jan. 6 riot, telling the Times, "I think our hearings got their attention, and they started to catch up. There was a point around the beginning of our hearings, where they wrote a letter asking us for all transcripts. That was a big change. They finally assigned some prosecutors and some resources to look at the broader context, not just violence at the Capitol."

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