The Justice Department has warned Congress that $34 million more in funding is “critically needed” to continue Jan. 6 investigations and prosecutions.
“The cases are unprecedented in scale and is expected to be among the most complex investigations prosecuted by the Department of Justice,” the DOJ wrote to Congress, NBC News reported.
While the message is yet to truly take hold with lawmakers, according to the report, the added funding would have to come in December’s spending bill when the Continue Resolution to fund the government expires.
If the DOJ’s requested boost fails to make it in the spending package, NBC News reported there’s concern that Republicans will not work to fund it if the GOP retakes the House majority in these midterms.
“There are lots of requests,” House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said when asked about boosting the DOJ budget for Jan. 6 prosecutions of Americans who protested the 2020 election certification. “We’re taking a look at all of them and seeing what makes it and seeing what doesn’t make it.”
The Jan. 6 investigations have been ongoing for 21 months led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., and assisted by 93 federal prosecutors’ offices around the country.
“We don’t have the manpower,” an official told NBC in July.
The DOJ told Congress the resources pouring into Jan. 6 investigations and prosecutions, if not funded to the tune of $34 million more, will have a “detrimental impact” on U.S. Attorney’s Offices in the U.S., which will “need to incur a budget reduction to fund these prosecutions.”
The DOJ warned Congress that might mean vacancies unfilled or other important cases will not be prosecuted.
“There are a lot of items that are up in the air at this point,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, member of the House Appropriations Committee, told NBC.
“They have to let us know. As an appropriator — they have to let us know if there are insufficient funds. But I think those who disgraced our country who perpetrated violence, desecrated these buildings — they should pay the price for that.”
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a senior GOP appropriator who sought debate on the 2020 election on Jan. 6, is open to adding $34 million to the DOJ budget for Jan. 6 prosecutions.
“Those people ought to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” he told NBC. “I don’t have any problem giving the Justice Department the resources it needs to do that.
“I don’t have any problem spending extra money to make sure that anybody that broke into this building is brought to justice.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco have vowed to spare no expense to prosecute Jan. 6 protesters, adding any shortfalls will be put on other areas of the DOJ, according to the report.
“Of course, we’d like more resources, and if Congress wants to give that to us, that would be very nice,” Garland told NBC in July. “But we have people — prosecutors and agents — from all over the country working on this matter, and I have every confidence in their ability, their professionalism, their dedication to this task.”
Monaco told reporters the Jan. 6 investigation “draws on resources from across the U.S. Attorney’s Offices — those same resources that are needed to fight violent crime, those same resources that are needed to investigate corporate crime across the country, those same resources that are going to help us enforce our civil rights laws.”
Reporting from Newsmax.
