There is word of a behind-the-scenes revolt at the January 6 committee. With its televised hearings now things of the past and its written report soon due to the printers, this was meant to be a time of pats on the back rather than back-biting. A dispatch from the Washington Post, however, suggests that the committee staffers are far from happy campers. Their personal pique is best read as camouflage for constitutional consternation. 

The Post reports that 15 current and former J6 staffers are “angered and disillusioned” by Congresswoman Elizabeth “Liz” Cheney’s “push to focus the report primarily on former president Donald Trump,” an obsession they ascribe to the “committee morphing into what they have come to view as the vehicle for the outgoing Wyoming lawmaker’s political future.” They worry that “important findings unrelated to Trump will not become available to the American public.”

“We all came from prestigious jobs, dropping what we were doing because we were told this would be an important fact-finding investigation,” one aide kvetches, only to realize that the committee “became a Cheney 2024 campaign.” Ms. Cheney will lose her congressional seat after the new year. Her spokesman accused the malcontents of submitting “subpar material for the report that reflects long-held liberal biases.”

A spokesman for the committee itself continued the pile on, remarking that the complainers have “forgotten their duties as public servants.” We agree, but not because they told tales outside of school. What was forgotten was not decorum, but the deep Constitution, with, in particular, its ban on pursuing attainder. In other words, trial by legislature, where guilt is discerned by lawmakers rather than by judges and juries. 

We learn that the committee’s staff was broken into various “teams.” The Green one looked into the financing for January 6, the Purple group eyed the involvement of extremists groups, and the Blue squad assessed the preparedness of law enforcement and intelligence. If reports from the back rooms are correct, these have all been diminished or cut in favor of the Gold group, the one focused on the 45th president. 

As we have noted before, the committee employs 14 ex-prosecutors, staffing more suitable for a United States attorney’s office than for a congressional body. So it is fair to speculate that among those complaining were those with law licenses. They would know that the ban on attainder is a fundament of America’s law and that violating it carries its own kind of guilt — and, on this head at least, not for President Trump.