A potentially explosive new probe, “Project 1512,” is emerging as a centerpiece of Attorney General Bondi’s agenda at the Department of Justice. The reference is to a statute used to charge more than 350 January 6 defendants, and the project aims to investigate the Biden Justice Department’s pursuit and prosecution of January 6 protesters.   

The New York Sun has obtained a copy of a previously unreported letter to the former deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, who served  under Attorney General Garland and is a longtime ally of Presidents Obama and Biden. Its sender is the current  interim United States attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin. The note, sent one week after President Trump was sworn in as the 47th president, documents the serious intent of “Project 1512.” 

The letter, dated January 27, 2005, asks Mrs. Monaco to “clarify” her role “in the Department of Justice’s decision to apply U.S. Code Section 1512(c)(2), which prohibits corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, in the federal prosecution of 355 defendants charged in the January 6th disturbance.” The letter suggests that the Trump DOJ sees Mrs. Monaco — and possibly another attorney, Andrew Weissman — as crucial figures in the formulation of this prosecutorial strategy. The Sun reached out to Mrs. Monaco and Mr. Weissman for comment.  

The statute dates from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was passed to combat financial fraud. A conviction carries a possible prison sentence of 20 years in prison — more than all the crimes charged in connection with the riot at the Capitol save seditious conspiracy. Every January 6 defendant charged with this species of obstruction was also charged with at least one other crime.  

The Sarbanes-Oxley charges were rejected in March of 2022 by a federal district judge, Carl Nichols,  but then reinstated by a fractured panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. By a two to one margin the riders determined that the statute covered “all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding,” not just the financial fraud crimes — Enron and WorldCom most prominently — that inspired the passage of the legislation in 2002. 

The Supreme Court, in Fisher v United States, eventually found that President Biden’s DOJ overreached when its lawyers handed up the Sarbanes-Oxley charge against those 355 defendants. By a six to three margin, the justices ruled that the charge can only be deployed when a defendant “impaired the availability or integrity” of a physical object used in an official proceeding.   

The statute, which aims to punish “whoever corruptly alters, destroys, mutilates or conceals a record, document or other object … or otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so” was also charged by Special Counsel Jack Smith against Mr. Trump. That prosecution was dismissed after Mr. Trump defeated Vice President Harris and secured the “categorical” immunity afforded sitting presidents.

Mr. Martin’s letter to Mrs. Monaco wants “to know why the Department continued charging 1512 felonies long after most legal analysts concluded the Fischer v. USA U.S. Supreme Court appeal would prevail, and your role in this decision.” He also requests “clarification of former Federal Bureau of Investigation General Counsel Andrew Weissmann’s role in devising and continuing this 1512 prosecution strategy — as your friend, or in a consulting role.”

Mr. Weissman, a contributor to MSNBC, was a top lieutenant of Special Counsel Robert Mueller during the Russia investigation in the first Trump term. He also served with Mrs. Monaco on the Enron task force in the early aughts that aggressively prosecuted executives involved in the energy company’s meltdown. 

Mr. Weissman was the architect of the government’s prosecution of Arthur Andersen, which did accounting for Enron. Arthur Anderson collapsed as a result of the prosecution, and while it later won at the Supreme Court, the damage was done. In his recent order sanctioning the law firm Jenner and Block, largely for having employed Mr. Weissman, Mr. Trump cited his role in Arthur Anderson’s collapse. 

Mr. Martin’s letter provides greater context for an email message, with the subject line “The 1512 Project is growing,” that Mr. Martin sent to his entire office on Friday morning. The note explained an ongoing commitment to investigate “exactly how and why so many Jan 6th cases were charged using 1512 which led to the dramatic failure before the Supreme Court.  We have contacted lawyers, staff and judges about this — and sought their feedback.”

The email relates that one legal expert “called the bi-partisan rejection of the 1512 charge the ‘greatest failure of legal judgement since FDR and his Attorney General put American citizens of Japanese descent in prison camps — and seized their property.’” That is a reference to the since-repudiated Supreme Court case of Korematsu v. United States. 

Mr. Martin writes that he agrees with that baleful comparison and vows to “continue to look at who ordered the 1512 and why. A lot to do.” Also busy is Mr. Martin’s superior, Ms. Bondi, who on January 20 announced the creation of a “Weaponization Working Group” to probe the “pursuit of improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions relating to events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” 

Mr. Trump, in one of the most dramatic moves of his still-young second presidency, extended clemency to some 1,500 January 6 defendants — including those who were charged under the Sarbanes-Oxley statute.