The Daily Fuckup

By Sept. 12, 2021, the fallout from Jan. 6 was no longer limited to the violence at the Capitol or to the immediate criminal cases filed in its wake. Federal investigators were still arresting and charging people tied to the breach, Congress was still demanding records and testimony, and litigation over access to presidential documents was already underway. The result was a live, layered investigation that kept moving long after the riot itself had ended.

The Justice Department had made clear throughout 2021 that the investigation remained open and that prosecutions were still coming. In cases involving members and associates of the Proud Boys, prosecutors were already describing communications, travel planning and coordination before Jan. 6 as part of the evidence they were gathering. Those filings did not amount to a completed reckoning, and they did not resolve the question of who in Trump’s circle knew what before the attack. But they did show that investigators were looking past the day of the breach and into the planning that preceded it.

At the same time, the legal fight over presidential records had begun to take shape. Trump was challenging the effort to provide the House Jan. 6 select committee access to White House documents, and the dispute would later move into the Supreme Court. As of this edition date, though, the point was simpler: the records fight had already become part of the Jan. 6 story, and it was now moving through the legal system as well as the political one. That meant the paper trail around the attack was still being built, still being contested, and still being pulled into official proceedings that could outlast the news cycle.