The FBI investigation into Jan. 6 started right away, but it has taken years to build up to a probe that could connect former President Donald Trump and his backers like Roger Stone to some kind of lawbreaking activity, The Washington Post reported Monday.
As legal expert Alan Dershowitz famously repeats on Newsmax, "show me the man, and I'll find you the crime," Attorney General Merrick Garland's Justice Department has long had their men and continue to hunt for a crime to pin on them, according to the detailed exposé into the origins of the FBI's Jan. 6 investigation.
Special counsel Jack Smith leads the team.
It took over a year, despite DOJ hints from the start, to include Trump into the investigation into Jan. 6, the Post reported.
Among the details chronicled by the Post are how officials tied to past FBI investigations with political ties were working on the Jan. 6 case:
- Former Washington, D.C., field office chief Steven D'Antuono, who came over from Detroit from an FBI case that involved a plot to kidnap Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
- Michael Sherwin, former acting U.S. attorney for D.C., who came from the Miami field office, where he investigated the 2018 Florida Trump supporter who sent mail bombs to Democrats and won a conviction of a Chinese spy at Mar-a-Lago.
- J.P. Cooney, the U.S. attorney who charged Stone with witness tampering and lying to Congress.
The Post reported that Cooney had long sought to tie Jan. 6 investigations to Trump-related associates, including Stone, but was rebuffed due to lack of legal predicate.
Ultimately, Garland's DOJ has convicted 23 of 29 people tied to the Oath Keepers, including some for seditious conspiracy.
"I hear everybody kind of wants everything to go faster," Matthew Graves, current U.S. attorney for D.C., who succeeded Sherwin, told the Post. "But I think if you kind of look at this in historical perspective — what the department has been able to achieve — I think when people get some distance from it, it will stand as something unprecedented."
A day before the Post exposé was published, Trump took to Truth Social to post about the Jan. 6 investigation — after a week-long critique of the other indictments and grand juries brought to investigate him.
"They don't go after the people who cheated in the election, they only go after the people who report on, or question, the cheating," Trump posted Sunday.
He followed that post with another Monday, shared that statement, and expounding on it.
"Will go down as the biggest disgrace in american history, even bigger than the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax," Trump wrote. "If you don't have honest elections (and strong borders!), you don't have a country!"
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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