A member of the House select committee investigating the causes of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building says that former President Donald Trump will likely be indicted for his role in the day’s events, as well as his attempts to overturn the legitimate outcome of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to President Joe Biden.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) spoke on Saturday as a guest on Yahoo News’s “Skulduggery” podcast. His commentary on the prospects of Trump facing criminal charges relating to the Capitol attack came just a few days after the January 6 committee voted unanimously to send criminal referrals to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to consider in charging Trump and some of his allies.
The Justice Department does not have to abide by the criminal referrals, which still have to be voted on by the full House of Representatives. But Raskin said he would “really be surprised” if Attorney General Merrick Garland didn’t move to indict Trump, based on the committee’s findings.
“There’s just deep culpability from the very beginning in everything that Donald Trump did,” Raskin explained.
To the Maryland congressman, it’s “very, very important that we establish that it’s not just foot soldiers, but kingpins who are prosecuted,” Raskin said on the podcast. “And it’s just wrong to send hundreds of foot soldiers to jail and leave the very clear kingpin unprosecuted” — the kingpin, of course, refers to the former president.
I’m very serious about him facing the consequences and paying for the cost of his action. He could spend the remaining days of his misanthropic life behind bars, presumably with Secret Service agents.
In its final public hearing before it published its final report, the January 6 committee made a number of criminal referrals against Trump and those who worked with him to try and illegally keep him in the White House. The committee recommended the DOJ charge Trump with inciting an insurrection, conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to cause others to make false statements, and obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress.
Raskin himself read the charges that the committee recommended be pursued against Trump during the hearing, which took place on Monday last week. “We have gone where the facts and the law lead us, and inescapably, they lead us here,” Raskin said during the meeting.
Notably, the DOJ is also conducting a separate investigation into the attack on the Capitol on January 6, an inquiry that also includes looking into every effort by Trump to overturn the presidential election. The DOJ’s investigation, which has been handed to special counsel Jack Smith, could look at the committee’s evidence and decide to pursue charges even without considering the formal recommendation.
To many outside legal experts looking in on the inquiry, it appears all but certain that Smith will pursue charges against Trump.
Noting that Smith has recruited a number of other seasoned prosecutors to join him in the investigation, Preet Bharara, himself a former federal prosecutor, said he believes these and other moves are signals that charges are imminent.
“I don’t think they would’ve left their former positions, both in government and private practice, unless there was a serious possibility that the Justice Department was on a path to charge,” Bharara said earlier this month.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.