President Trump appears to be waking up to the stunning possibility that the J6 Committee in the House might have destroyed or discarded evidence relevant to his defense. It would be a breathtaking breach, if true. We’ve long argued that the committee was flouting due process by conducting a de facto trial in Congress. That violates the Constitution’s ban on any bill of attainder, or in layman’s terms, a “trial by legislature.”

Mr. Trump now looks to be moving questions over the legitimacy of the committee to the center of his legal defense. He is claiming that the panel “illegally destroyed all of their records and their documents.” Mr. Trump may be overstating concerns of Congressman Barry Loudermilk, reported by our Russell Payne. If true, though, it could prove relevant to Mr. Trump’s legal defense. January 6 findings, after all, were turned over to the DOJ. 

The extent to which federal prosecutors relied on the committee’s investigation, though, may be hard to determine, if, as Mr. Trump claims, “they took all of their records” and “then they destroyed everything.” In Mr. Trump’s view, the panel’s behavior suggests that “the fake political indictment must be immediately withdrawn.” Legally speaking, this view could find justification in what’s known as the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree.

This doctrine, a mainstay of criminal law, forbids the use in a trial of evidence that is generated by unconstitutional means, like an illegal search or interrogation. So if the J6 committee, which hired 14 ex-federal prosecutors to help conduct its probe, was holding a trial by legislature in defiance of the Constitution, that would appear to suggest that the evidence it found, then gave to prosecutors, is not usable in the federal case against Mr. Trump.

This concern was underscored in a recent interview with Speaker Pelosi by New York Magazine, in which, as we noted, she took a kind of victory lap to celebrate Mr. Trump’s indictment. While she was careful — too careful, in our view — to avoid taking “any sort of credit for the committee’s work or Trump’s indictment,” New York did note that Jack Smith’s case against Mr. Trump “closely tracks the select committee’s work and findings.” 

No wonder Mr. Trump now grouses that the committee “tried to get me indicted — and probably did.” Worse, from the former president’s viewpoint, is his concern that the panel has “Discarded, Deleted, Thrown Out” evidence in what he sees as an attempt to conceal it from him. “They had so much to hide, and now that I have Subpoena Power, they didn’t want to get caught,” Mr. Trump says. 

Mr. Trump echoes the concerns of the Oversight Committee’s Mr. Loudermilk, who contends he was given “an incomplete set of records from the committee.” He also says the committee “failed to provide any evidence that it looked into Capitol Hill security failures,” on January 6, Los Angeles Times reports, a potentially more serious accusation, if it means that the panel is withholding evidence that could help prove Mr. Trump’s innocence.

The January 6 committee chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, maintains that the panel followed the guidance of the Office of the Clerk in preserving records and chose not to archive only “temporary committee records” and those that “did not further its investigative activities.” Prosecutors say they consider the committee records to be among the “sensitive” materials subject to the “protective order” they requested from the judge.

Forgive us, but we wonder why. As Los Angeles Times reports, the January 6 committee’s work was “among the most extensive probes in congressional history,” yet “much of it was done behind closed doors, so the full extent of what was collected is unknown.” The panel “spoke with more than 1,000 people,” yielding “potentially millions of pages of” evidence. Mr. Trump  suddenly senses that the fate of this material could prove decisive for  his trial — and career.