As we have written before, it is often the case that documents outweigh personal testimony, even eyewitness testimony. Most documents are made contemporaneously when memories are fresh, not nine to eighteen months later. This is especially true of government employees who are continually writing memos because A) It is very easy to forget who said what to who, where, and when, and B) No one wants to be left holding the bag for doing something for which they’re not responsible.

Of course, it would be even more important within the Trump administration. Recall how ducksh*t insane Trump went whenever Congress requested documents? “Executive privilege?” Well, the Justice Department has already ruled that government employees’ testimony regarding January 6th is not subject to executive privilege. It follows that documents pertaining to “Stop the Steal” will not be subject to privilege, either. Donald Trump has no idea who wrote what and when to protect themselves. Trump always believed that talking in code and never writing anything down protected him. He may not know that many people left their meeting and immediately wrote a memo to the file.

The House Committee charged with investigating all things January 6th just planted its flag and requested “a massive trove of documents,” which – when delivered, will be poured over by dozens of investigators and young attorneys assigned to the committee. Every memo that falls under the heading of “It wasn’t me!” will be found.

From CNN:

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack requested a massive tranche of documents from several US government agencies — signaling they intend to undertake a sprawling probe of security failures and attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

This initial wave of document requests was sent to various executive branch agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Defense and Interior, the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Office of the National Intelligence as well as the National Archives, which has legal custody of all the presidential records from former President Donald Trump’s time in office.

The presidential records may be a bit more problematic because they might still be protected by executive privilege and if DOJ opens the door to Trump’s records, they will be opening the door to House Republicans in 2022 (if they win) to begin the impeachment process they surely already have planned.

Someway, somehow, the DOJ must find a way to limit those executive records as “only” those pertaining to organizing and planning of January 6th for national defense purposes, even if it takes an independent task force to sort through what is relevant and what is not, perhaps put date limits upon it: From December 15th (Day of Electoral College votes) to January 15th to include those days when people were panicking and resigning.

And they’re not done. They committee is going after social media records:

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee chairman and a Mississippi Democrat, said the panel plans to send notices to social media companies, too, though he declined to name which ones. “I can tell you that we’ll look at everything that will give us information on what happened on January 6,” Thompson said. “We will look at all records at some point.”

They are going to build a timeline. They want to know who said what and when. Then they’re going to put Trump’s tweets (And everyone else relevant) right up against that timeline. One can see them working. They are not playing around and they fired a massive shot today. Good thing. Because it was only a week ago we were reading about the FBI finding “scant evidence” of centralized planning. The FBI best get moving because it would be humiliating if Congress was able to find plenty of evidence of centralized planning.

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