Democrat’s January 6 Committee’s Trump Probe Costing Taxpayers Millions This Year

House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol member Representative Adam Kinzinger delivers closing remarks during a prime-time hearing with Vice Chairwoman Representative Liz Cheney in the Cannon House Office Building on July 21, 2022, in Washington, D.C. According to Congressional quarterly expense reports released this week, the Select Committee on Jan. 6 spent more than $3.3 million to conduct its work between April and June. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Nick Reynolds

Between personnel costs and expenses, it costs a lot to keep the federal government running. But Congress investigating the root causes of the largest criminal investigation in history? That, it turns out, costs extra. A lot extra.

According to Congressional quarterly expense reports released this week, the Select Committee on the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot spent more than $3.3 million to conduct its work between April and June. Its budget is roughly four times that of the committee to investigate climate change and well above the total spending of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

A deeper review of House expenditures for the most recent quarter shows that the committee’s spending was eclipsed only by major standing committees like the House Committee on Foreign Affairs ($3.8 million), Committee on Homeland Security ($3.7 million) and House Ways and Means ($4.8 million), which have substantial personnel obligations that often carry highly specialized expertise.

The expenditures were more or less anticipated. Entering April, the committee had already wracked up more than $2.5 million in expenses amassing a team of outside counsel to investigate the causes of the riot, including a number of former prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice.

In all, 57 staffers, including lawyers, investigators, and auxiliary staff, received $1.6 million in salaries the last quarter alone for work on the committee, including everyone from investigators to lawyers to communications staff. The panel paid out $1.6 million in compensation last quarter, rivaling that of standing committees like the House Judiciary Committee ($1.8 million) and the Committee on Education and Labor ($1.9 million.)

As the committee began preparing for the start of televised hearings in early June, the cost of the committee’s work began to increase, as additional funds were spent on outside contractors like Polar Solutions Inc. (a Maryland firm that specializes in money laundering investigations) and PATCtech, a digital forensics firm. Early projections by the Washington Post projected the committee’s spending, by year’s end, could eclipse $9.3 million since it began keeping records in July of 2021.

That would make the committee’s investigation one of the most expensive—if not the most expensive—congressional investigations in the last 20 years. For comparison, the committee that investigated the attack on the U.S. Consular Office in Benghazi during the Obama years spent less than $8 million over a two-plus-year period.

Other Congressional endeavors throughout history also were costly. One oversight report of Senator Joe McCarthy’s investigations of potential communists in the early 1950s detailed one outside consultant who earned nearly $33,000 in fees over a two-year period (just under $365,000 today) despite little evidence they’d actually performed any work for the taxpayer.

The committee to investigate Watergate, according to a 1974 White House Communications memo, amassed $6.3 million in expenses over the course of a single year between a staff of more than 300, equivalent to nearly $40 million in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation.

https://www.newsweek.com/jan-6-committees-trump-probe-cost-taxpayers-millions-this-year-1741546