Name: DOJ seeks to dismiss lawsuit over plaque commemorating Jan. 6 officers
Uploaded: 2025-12-10T17:49:29.810Z
Duration: 2 min 36 s
Description: The Justice Department is trying to get a lawsuit dismissed that calls for a plaque commemorating police officers injured on Jan. 6 to be hung at the U.S. Capitol. CBS News justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane has the latest.

The Justice Department is trying to get a lawsuit dismissed that calls for a plaque commemorating police officers injured on Jan. 6 to be hung at the U.S. Capitol. CBS News justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane has the latest.

Washington

The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking to dismiss a civil lawsuit filed by two police officers who responded to the January 6th Capitol riots. The lawsuit aims to compel the Architect of the Capitol to install a commemorative plaque, which is legally mandated but has not yet been hung. The DOJ contends that the officers do not have legal standing and that the current plaque design does not meet statutory requirements, as it lists only police departments rather than all individual responders.

In a separate development, a federal judge has ordered the unsealing of 2019 grand jury materials from the Jeffrey Epstein prosecution, as required by a new federal law. The release, which could amount to hundreds of thousands of pages, must be made available in a searchable format, though the method and timing of the release remain uncertain.

DOJ seeks to dismiss lawsuit over plaque commemorating Jan. 6 officers

The Justice Department is trying to dismiss a civil lawsuit brought by injured police officers who responded to the riots on January 6th. This is all over a plaque. CBS News Justice correspondent Scott McFarlane is live in D.C. with more on this. So Scott, break the story down for us. Vlad, this January 6th plaque required under law to be hung by 2023 has still not been hung nearly three years later and it's now a federal case, literally a federal case. Two police officers who responded heroically on January 6th filed a suit asking a court to order the architect of the capitol hang that plaque as is legally mandated on the capitol's west front. The Department of Justice has just filed a motion Vlad saying no, that those two officers don't have standing to make that argument and that the plaque you just saw is faulty, that the law requires every single police officer who responded 3,000 plus to be listed on the plaque and instead the plaque just has 21 police departments on it. Unclear where this goes from here but to be clear the Department of Justice and Trump administration are arguing in court against hanging a plaque to honor police officers from January 6th amid a whitewashing of January 6th and its history by the president and by his administration. Remarkable. Scott, we're also hearing there's a new release coming for some Epstein files. What can you tell us? Federal judge down the road from you Vlad in Manhattan has ordered that the 2019 Jeffrey Epstein prosecution grand jury materials investigative materials be unsealed. It is rare for a judge to unseal grand jury materials but under this new law passed by congress signed by the president requiring the release of the full Epstein files there have been not one not two but three federal judges who've ordered the release of Epstein case files in their jurisdiction. A 2005 case against Epstein investigation in Florida. The 2019 investigation of Ghislaine Maxwell in New York that was ordered yesterday and today a judge orders the release of the 2019 investigation into Epstein himself. It's not clear Vlad when we're going to see paper on this but it's going to be hundreds of thousands of pages and it could come before December 19th. And so is this going to be sort of a drip drip Scott or do we expect a bulk drop? No one knows how they're going to do this. It's got to be released in a searchable form for the public under this federal law but it very well could be a drip drip piecemeal thing done incrementally over time. There's no reason to believe they throw everything down at the same moment though that would make it more difficult for the public to search whether that's something people desire or not. Yeah all right Scott McFarlane reporting from Washington. Thank you Scott.

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