We keep running into a relatively new and unfamiliar dynamic where the tools of investigative journalism as they are usually deployed wind up obscuring the truth rather than illuminating it.

It’s playing out now in the coverage of the Jan. 6 attack, especially over the last few days. First with the controversial PowerPoint presentation that’s been circulating, and since last night with the Mark Meadows texts.

As the first anniversary of the insurrection approaches, the Jan. 6 committee will probably vote later this evening to refer Mark Meadows for prosecution for contempt of Congress. It’s a proper and necessary step. But it is also singularly unsatisfying and insufficient.

A contempt conviction and a modest jail term for Meadows or Steven Bannon or any other Trumpster determined not to cooperate with Congress doesn’t produce either justice or a warm feeling of schadenfreude. Only a criminal investigation by the Justice Department can bring to bear the resources and stiff punishments that will do justice to the severity of what happened in 2020 and culminated on Jan. 6.

A DC lawyer reader is dismayed by the coverage of today’s Supreme Court decision on the Texas abortion ban:

The press coverage of this decision is all wrong. 

Sure, the 5-justice majority permitted a narrow route into federal court.  But it will be easy for Texas and other states to close that route and block all access to federal court – because the majority makes clear that is permissible.

This is the best thing you’ll read on the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in the soon-to-be landmark Mississippi abortion case.

I could read and write all day every day about those days in late September 2020 when Trump became the superspreader-in-chief. It almost feels like an obligation to do so, that we may inoculate ourselves against the potential claims of future historians that we were a blind, gullible, clueless people. Yes, we were, but not nearly as much as this episode suggests. We knew. We got it. The White House COVID outbreak with Trump at its center was very, very bad, and we understood that much in real time, not only in retrospect.

But now we have a new or more precisely an updated account of the shitshow, from someone who was neck deep in the shit at the time. Poor Chris Christie. He was done wrong so many times by Trump. He was the toadiest toady. There was the hostage video. There was this unforgettable headline: “Trump Uses Chris Christie As ‘Manservant’ To Fetch His McDonald’s.” There was Christie being unceremoniously dumped as the head of the transition. But in none of those episodes did Trump try to kill Christie.

Federal appeals court finds Trump’s claims of executive privilege to block a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee to be utterly without merit.

I didn’t get to this until last night, after the Roe coverage was completed. But it’s worth a few minutes of your time to watch Ted Cruz flailing.

It’s all Matt Shuham’s fault.

Back in May, Matt interviewed the lawyer for the most high-profile Jan. 6 defendant of them all: Jacob Chansley, the QAnon shaman. The quotes from the lawyer were enough to peel your hair back.

Now they may*** be the basis for an ineffective assistance of counsel appeal from Chansley, who has already pleaded guilty and been sentenced.

Live updates here.