Lawmakers on the House January 6 committee will air the inquiry’s findings during a public hearing Thursday.
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
- House Jan. 6 committee members said they have uncovered sufficient evidence to indict Trump.
- Rep. Adam Schiff said he’d like to see “any credible allegation of criminal activity” be investigated.
- Rep. Jamie Raskin said the panel last week made the case for why they felt Trump violated several criminal statutes.
The members of the House panel investigating the Capitol riot on Sunday said that the panel has uncovered enough evidence for the Department of Justice to mull a criminal indictment against former President Donald Trump over his efforts to invalidate President Joe Biden’s electoral win, according to The Associated Press.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who sits on the panel and also leads the House Intelligence Committee, said that he wanted to see the department examine Trump’s efforts in seeking to halt the certification of Biden’s victory.
“I would like to see the Justice Department investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump,” he said on ABC News on Sunday. “There are certain actions, parts of these different lines of effort to overturn the election that I don’t see evidence the Justice Department is investigating.”
Last week, the committee held its first public hearing — in prime time — where the panel members articulated what they pieced together as they probed the riot and Trump’s role in provoking the violence. The members spoke of the former president’s insistence that the election had been stolen from him despite a slew of advisors telling him privately that there was no evidence of widescale fraud.
In this week’s upcoming hearings, the panel is set to disclose evidence pointing to Trump and several of his advisors who sought to “spread misinformation” and push the Justice Department to endorse Trump’s unsubstantiated election claims.
The panel members on Sunday pointed to US Attorney General Merrick Garland as key in determining whether or not Trump will be prosecuted by the Justice Department.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland on Sunday said that he wouldn’t unduly pressure Garland, but felt that the panel made the case for why Trump may have violated several criminal statutes.
“I think that he knows, his staff knows, the US attorneys know, what’s at stake here,” Raskin expressed on CNN on Sunday. “They know the importance of it, but I think they are rightfully paying close attention to precedent in history as well, as the facts of this case.”
Garland has not yet indicated how he will handle the committee’s findings given that Trump has been teasing a potential 2024 White House campaign since he left the Oval Office last year.
In a March ruling, a federal judge in California said that Trump “likely” obstructed Congress when he sought to halt the certification of the Electoral College results on January 6.
The ruling prompted some panel members and staffers to say that there was enough of a paper trail “to justify calling for a prosecution for obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiring to defraud the American people,” according to a New York Times report from April.
Trump has rejected any sort of wrongdoing regarding the election.
Schiff said the department should probe “credible evidence” of criminal conduct.
“Once the evidence is accumulated by the Justice Department, it needs to make a decision about whether it can prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt the president’s guilt or anyone else’s,” Schiff said. “But they need to be investigated if there’s credible evidence, which I think there is.”