Jan. 6 investigators hit back at Trump over pardon threat: ‘Do it. Or shut up’

The members of the Jan. 6 investigative committee are hitting back at President Trump for his threat to nullify the presidential pardons surrounding their work.

The investigators not only contend that Trump lacks the authority to revoke the preemptive pardons, which were issued in January by former President Biden, but also maintain that their probe was open, thorough and unassailable in its conclusion that Trump was the driving force behind the violent rampage at the U.S. Capitol four years ago.

“Despite their threats to Congresswoman Cheney and the chairman of our committee, Bennie Thompson, no one has committed any kind of infraction in the conduct of the Jan. 6 proceedings, nor in the preparation of our report, and no one has laid a glove on a single factual statement in our report,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who sat on the Jan. 6 panel, told The Hill in an interview. “We are proud of our work documenting the insurrectionary violence and they haven’t contradicted any of our findings.”

“Everything else is political noise,” he added. “The members of the Jan. 6 committee stand by our work.”

Others are actually encouraging Trump to come after them so they have the opportunity to showcase, once again, the evidence behind their verdict. 

“The January 6 Committee did its job,” former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) wrote Monday in a Substack post. “It stood up for democracy while Trump and his sycophants tried to burn it down. The people who cooperated did so in the name of truth, accountability, and the preservation of our republic. They were almost ALL REPUBLICANS, And now, because he can’t handle reality, Trump wants to puff out his chest and threaten the committee?”

“Fine. Do it. Or shut up.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who also sat on the nine-member investigative panel, was similarly defiant, saying Trump’s suggestion that the investigators could be in hot water with his Justice Department will do nothing to stop the critics from denouncing his role surrounding the Jan. 6 riot.

“The members of the Jan 6 Committee are all proud of our work,” Schiff wrote on the social platform X. “Your threats will not intimidate us.”

“Or silence us.”

The bitter feud between Trump and the members of the Jan. 6 committee stretches back to the panel's creation in the months after the Capitol attack in 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building in a failed effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat. More than 140 law enforcers were injured in the violence, and the investigators — including two Republicans — concluded that Trump was singularly responsible for the riot.

Trump’s return to the White House has renewed the partisan debate over not only the panel’s findings but also the very nature of the rampage itself. Trump and his congressional allies have sought to whitewash the violent history of the event, characterizing Jan. 6 as a “day of love,” portraying the rioters as victims and accusing the investigators of conducting a partisan witch hunt. 

In December, after his election victory, Trump had threatened to imprison the members of the investigative team, which prompted Biden to pardon them preemptively on his very last day in office.

Trump then pardoned more than 1,500 rioters in his first days in the White House, including those convicted of maiming law enforcers. And on Sunday, the president amplified the threat against the Jan. 6 investigators, saying their pardons were invalid because Biden had used an autopen to sign them. 

“The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,” Trump wrote on the Truth Social platform that he owns.

Trump suggested he’s ready to launch criminal investigations into their work.

“Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level,” Trump added.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chair of the Jan. 6 panel, was one of the few members who was open to a pardon before Biden had issued them. But on Monday, he joined the others on the panel in defending the investigation as unimpeachable. 

“Trump was responsible for Jan 6. That’s why on day one he pardoned those who beat police that day,” Thompson wrote on X. “We thoroughly & legally investigated what he did and have lived rent free in his mind since. He knows his guilt.” 

“I am not afraid of his rant that has no basis in reality.”

Quite aside from the politics of the pardons, Raskin is pointing to another reason the Jan. 6 investigators have little reason to fear Trump’s threats: The president, he said, simply doesn’t have the power to invalidate Biden’s action.

Raskin — a former constitutional law professor — said the pardon powers laid out in Article I Section II of the Constitution were written broadly and do not require written correspondence to back up clemency. The president, he argued, could simply grant pardons verbally.

“Legally, the president’s comments are off base,” Raskin said. “The courts and the Office of Legal Counsel have both been clear that there doesn’t even need to be a writing for a pardon or commutation to be executed — it can even be done verbally."

“You could announce pardons or commutations from the Rose Garden or the Oval Office and that is effective because the Constitution just says that the president has power to issue pardons and reprieves,” Raskin continued. “It doesn’t say that it has to be written.”

The Maryland Democrat pointed to a 2024 opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit that says the Constitution does not say a presidential pardon has to come in a particular form. The case looked at whether a man’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus was valid after then-President Trump said he would commute his sentence during a phone call with two of his associates.

“The first principle resolves the matter of whether a writing is required as part of the President’s exercise of the clemency power. The answer is undoubtedly no,” the opinion reads. “The plain language of the Constitution imposes no such limit, broadly providing that the President ‘shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.’ The constitutional text is thus silent as to any particular form the President’s clemency act must take to be effective.”

The opinion was written by Judge George Steven Agee, who was appointed by former President Bush in 2008.

Raskin also cited a 2005 memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that says it is lawful for a subordinate to write the president’s signature — including by autopen — as long as the commander in chief directs them to.

“It is the demonstrable and demonstrated intention of the president to act which counts,” Raskin said. “It sounds like President Trump believes he’s caught President Biden up in some kind of technicality, but he has not. The Department of Justice has taken the position for decades, at least since the Nixon administration, that a presidential signature can be effectuated when a president authorizes and directs someone else to affix his name.”

Trump acknowledged that he has used autopen during his time in the White House, but noted it was for “very unimportant papers.”

The White House, for its part, is defending the president’s late-night comments. Asked if attorneys at the White House have told Trump that he has the legal authority to undo pardons because they were signed by autopen, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt deflected to Biden’s cognitive ability.

“The president was begging the question that I think a lot of journalists in this room should be asking about whether or not the former president of the United States, who I think we can all finally agree was cognitively impaired,” Leavitt said.

“The president was raising the point that did the president even know about these pardons? Was his legal signature used without his consent or knowledge?” she added. “I think it's a question that everybody in this room should be looking into. Because certainly, that would propose perhaps criminal or illegal behavior if staff members were signing the president of the United States autograph without his consent.”

Pressed on whether there was evidence that Biden was not aware of his signature being used, Leavitt responded: “You're a reporter, you should find out.”

Despite the questions from the White House, members of the Jan. 6 committee are upholding their work, shifting attention to Trump and accusing him of trying to mask what took place at the Capitol more than four years ago.

“The members of the January 6 Select Committee did our legislative work uncovering the role Trump played in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He should be ashamed, & he is trying to erase the truth,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), another Jan. 6 committee member, wrote on X. 

“Yet, the truth remains, & we won't be intimidated or silenced.”