House turns over Capitol tour investigation to U.S. Attorney’s office

| 9:15 pm EST February 25, 2021
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Last month various House Democrats publicly stated that they saw certain unnamed House Republicans giving tours of the Capitol in the days before the January 6th domestic terrorist attack, and asserted that these tours did not appear to be on the up and up. Then the storyline went quiet.

When that happens, it’s generally for one of two very different reasons. The first is that it ended up not going anywhere. The second is that the investigation got serious enough that everyone involved needed to stop publicly talking about it while it played out. Now there’s some indication that it’s the latter.

Congressman Tim Ryan, who was in charge of running the internal investigation, announced today that the matter has now been turned over to the U.S. Attorney’s office, which is “reviewing footage.”

It seems obvious, but it’s worth stating: if the investigation found nothing potentially criminal, then there would be nothing to turn over to criminal prosecutors. So it suggests that they found something worthy of being evaluated for potential criminal prosecution. They aren’t “reviewing footage” of giraffes. Now we wait for the U.S. Attorney’s office to conduct its own criminal probe and take any action warranted.