Judges in Jan. 6 cases and watchdog groups recoil at Justice Department's deletion of records
CBSN
A decision by the acting leadership at the U.S. Justice Department to delete its public webpages and case summaries of the Jan. 6 siege at the Capitol prosecution has triggered a legal challenge from a watchdog group and blowback from a federal judge who oversaw some of the cases.
The controversial decision has also drawn the ire of one of the rioters who pleaded guilty.
The Justice Department had built a comprehensive database of the approximately 1,600 defendants from the U.S. Capitol attack and had produced a monthly set of reports updating the prosecution, which was the largest in the agency's long history. Last week, the database and designated public web pages went dark, as the agency halted its prosecutions of the rioters, under orders from President Trump.
