ALEXANDRIA, Va. — After the January 6th riots, a team of lawyers was brought together to investigate how the "Big Lie" and rioters planned to stop the transfer of power. One of those investigators is Marcus Childress.
History will judge the work he and others did on behalf of the country.
But first, he had to answer a call that came when his son Mars was just a few months old. The call was about a bipartisan mission that would pull him away from his young family most days for more than a year.
“[It] felt surreal,” said Childress, who was an attorney at Jenner & Block at the time. “It’s from the chief investigative counsel who called me and said that, of course, we’re ramping up to investigate the January 6th attack.”
With a young son, and his wife about to return to work, it was an offer he had to ponder.
“I prayed about it, and my wife and I thought about it pretty deeply. And we moved on faith. And, I took the job early on in August of 2021,” said Childress.
The job of this George Mason University and American Law School grad was to serve as an Investigative Counsel for the House Select Committee. But it was his service to the nation, in the Air Force, that prepared Marcus to accept the role.
Back then, as a U.S. JAG officer, he prosecuted cases involving the military and extremist groups.
“I really leaned into that experience of looking into why these Air Force members would want to be part of a motorcycle gang. And it really helped me when I was trying to figure out why these Air Force members would want to be part of the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys,” said Childress.
Childress would end up deposing 60 members of those groups. Some of whom were veterans.
“You have military veterans who serve their entire careers understanding chain of command and they’re sitting here saying if the commander-in-chief tells me that the election is stolen, who am I not to believe them,” observed Childress.
Childress said he found that to be a powerful testimony.
“Just objectively of how important it is for our leaders to lead. And if our leaders are sharing the BIG LIE, then a large number of people in our country are likely going to follow it.”
For the investigators on the January 6th committee, it all came down to the facts.
“We did not go into the investigation saying that the former president did X or that it was because this person did Y that people stormed the Capitol,” recalled Childress. “We also understood the gravity of what we were doing - that was never lost on us, and we wanted to get it right.”
In addition to the depositions, Marcus also spent months watching every frame of the video from that day. He built a chronology to reconstruct the narrative of January 6th. He said what he saw and heard was searing.
During our conversation, Childress opened up about how that experience impacted him.
“I’m still processing it. I think it was you hit a point, where you just kind of become numb to what you’re seeing, the constant violence, the angry chants, that, some of those chants were directed at people that look like me and you,” said Childress.
But, Childress said he had to keep going despite the trauma, at times, of viewing the violence in a near-constant loop.
“Something that was abundantly clear to me from the very beginning, was that if we were going to win over the hearts and minds of Americans, they had to see the violence on the day,” said Childress. “They had to see our law enforcement bravely fighting to preserve democracy.”
Childress was one of the authors of the 845-page January 6th report and played a lead role in the prime-time hearings.
Going through photos, he talked about some of the moments that most of us couldn’t see.
“It was, I mean, standing room only for every hearing that we had,” said Childress, showing a photo of a full room during the primetime hearings. “You could feel the intensity with every hearing. You knew that millions of Americans and millions of people around the world were watching.”
Childress said he knew that what the Congressional members presented had to register in a powerful way, which is why they opened that first primetime hearing in June 2022 with a series of disturbing moments from January 6th.
“When we showed that 11-minute montage, I think that’s why I was able to captivate the country so quickly because it was so visceral and then you had Officer Caroline Edwards and Nick Quested talking about what it was like to live through it,” said Childress.
Childress noted where we are now as a nation has everything to do with accountability.
“The discussion now is what do we do with the people who were involved with January 6th. And that just shows that Americans believe what we put out there and we’re now just trying to figure out what kind of country we want to be in the future.”
At his home in Virginia, Childress said he cherishes moments with Mars who is now 2 years old.
“I necessarily wasn’t home there for some of the big moments, like his first steps or eating solids for the first time. But Jasmine always reminded me that he’s going to be reading about this when he’s in college, in high school and telling his kids about this.”
Childress’ wife Jasmine, puts it all in perspective.
“I think he’s going to be a really big part of history and it’s really cool to see that for Mars, that he was alive and we were able to witness it firsthand,” she said.
So what’s next for this third-generation Air Force officer, now a partner at his law firm?
“I’m a public servant at heart,” said Childress. “I’m happy to be in a place where I can continue to give back to the local Alexandria community, to the DC community. But I’d be lying to you if I said if I have another call for something that will help make my son’s life better, that I wouldn’t take it.”
For now, he’s still processing what happened when he took that other call back in 2021.
Childress said he hopes he’ll be remembered for being someone who had integrity, who treated everyone with respect and for being relentless in trying to find the truth.
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