Jan. 6 Committee Chair Bennie Thompson Refuses DOJ Request For Transcripts: ‘We’re Not Giving Anyone Access’
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) will reportedly not comply with a Justice Department request for interview transcripts compiled by the Jan. 6 House select committee, which he chairs.
On Tuesday, as part of its investigation into the Capitol breach, the DOJ asked the committee for records of its closed-door interviews.
NBC News reported:
Top Justice Department officials heading up the criminal investigation into the breach of the U.S. Capitol have asked the House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack for transcripts of interviews conducted in the congressional probe.
…
Justice Department Criminal Division chief Kenneth Polite and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves sent a letter requesting transcripts of interviews to the lead investigator for the House panel, former U.S. Attorney Timothy Heaphy.
NBC, citing an anonymous congressional aide, reported Thompson was considering complying with the request.
According to Hugo Lowell with the Guardian, Thompson has no intention of sharing the committee’s interview transcripts with the DOJ.
“They made a request. We told them that as a committee, our work product was ours, and we’re not giving anyone access to the work product,” Thompson reportedly said Tuesday. “It came with no names attached to it or anything. We’re still in the process of doing our work product. We cooperate all the time with agencies, people have come in and looked at information but we’ve not given access to the product.”
New: Jan. 6 committee chair Bennie Thompson tells CBS that they won’t turn over transcripts to DOJ right now: “They made a request. We told them that as a committee, our work product was ours, and we’re not giving anyone access to the work product.”
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) May 17, 2022
Thompson on DOJ request: “It came with no names attached to it or anything. We’re still in the process of doing our work product. We cooperate all the time with agencies, people have come in and looked at information but we’ve not given access to the product.”
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) May 17, 2022
