Witnesses seeking to evade testimony to the Jan. 6 committee may have landed on their most potent strategy: Pleading the Fifth
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Legal experts say the committee has few options once a witness pleads the Fifth — and the choices they do have are risky or impractical. Rep. Bennie Thompson speaks during a hearing by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. | Oliver Contreras/Getty Images For now, the committee has been content to emphasize Trump allies' extraordinary acknowledgment, by asserting their right against self-incrimination, that some of their actions related to the 2020 election may have crossed the line into criminality — even if it carries no legal weight.
The committee’s options for circumventing a Fifth Amendment assertion are extremely limited. One path would involve offering a form of immunity that would prevent a witness’ testimony from being used by prosecutors in any future criminal proceeding. Thompson said Monday that immunity was among the tools the committee could consider to compel another former Trump aide, Mark Meadows, to provide information to the panel.
A third option that some committee members — and other House Democrats — have floated is the concept of “inherent contempt.” That’s a process by which Congress bypasses the Justice Department and simply arrests or fines any recalcitrant witness. But House General Counsel Douglas Letter has made clear for years that this option is not realistic to pursue. It hasn’t been deployed in a century and it could lend itself to dangerous abuses in a body that is inherently political.
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