WASHINGTON (AP) – Members of the House of Representatives committee investigating the Capitol riot said Sunday they had uncovered enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal charge against former President Donald Trump for trying to to annul the results of the 2020 elections
The commission said Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, was among witnesses scheduled to testify at Monday’s hearing, which focused on Trump’s efforts to spread lies about stolen elections. Stepien was summoned for his public testimony.
As the hearings unfolded, spokesman Adam Schiff said he would like the department to “investigate any credible allegations of criminal activity by Donald Trump.” Schiff, D-California, who also heads the House Intelligence Committee’s intelligence committee, said “there are certain actions, parts of these different lines of action to cancel the election, which I see no evidence that the Department of Justice is investigating.”
The commission held its first public hearing last week, with members outlining their case against Trump to show how the defeated president relentlessly insisted on false allegations of rigged elections, although many advisers told him otherwise and how he stepped up an emergency reversal scheme. Joe Biden wins.
Additional evidence will be released in hearings this week that will show how Trump and some of his advisers have engaged in “massive efforts” to spread disinformation, press the Justice Department to accept his false allegations, and called on the then vice president. Mike Pence to reject state voters and block vote verification on January 6, 2021
Stephen, a longtime ally of Trump, is now chief adviser on the campaign of Trump-approved candidate for the Wyoming Republican House of Representatives, Harriet Hedgeman, who is fighting MP Liz Cheney, deputy chairman of the committee and a vocal critic of the former president. A Trump spokesman, Taylor Budovic, suggested the commission’s decision to summon Stepien was politically motivated.
The list of witnesses on Monday also includes BJay Pak, Atlanta’s chief federal prosecutor, who resigned on January 4, 2021, a day after the audio recording was made public, in which Trump called him “never-Trump” and Chris Steeworth, a former political editor of Fox News.
The commission said most of those interviewed in the investigation volunteered, although some wanted the summons to appear in public. Director Nick Custed, who provided documentary footage of the attack, said during a hearing last week that he had received a summons to appear.
The committee said it would provide clear evidence that “many” Republican lawmakers, including Scott Perry’s R-PA, have asked for Trump’s pardon to protect him from prosecution. Perry on Friday denied doing so, calling the allegation an “absolute, shameless and soulless lie.”
“We will not make accusations or say things without evidence or evidence in support of that,” said spokesman Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.
Lawmakers have said that perhaps their most important member of the public during the hearings could be Attorney General Merrick Garland, who must decide whether his department can and should pursue Trump. They left no doubt as to whether the evidence was sufficient to continue.
“Once the evidence is gathered by the Ministry of Justice, it must decide whether it can prove to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of the president or someone else,” Schiff said. “But they need to be investigated if there is credible evidence that I think there is.”
MP Jamie Ruskin, MD, said he did not intend to “shake” Garland, but noted that the commission had already set out in legal pleadings criminal laws that it believed Trump had violated.
“I think he knows, his staff knows, American lawyers know what’s at stake here,” Ruskin said. “They know the importance of this, but I think they are right to pay close attention to the precedents in history, as well as the facts of this case.
Garland did not specify whether he would be willing to sue, which would be unprecedented and could be complicated in the political election season, in which Trump openly flirted with the idea of running for president again.
No president or former president has ever been accused.
Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 after facing impeachment and possibly a grand jury charge of bribery, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. President Gerald Ford later pardoned his predecessor before criminal charges could be brought against Watergate.
Legal experts say the prosecution of Trump over the Justice Ministry riot could set an unpleasant precedent in which one party’s administration could more routinely prosecute another’s former president.
“We will follow the facts wherever they go,” Garland said in a speech at Harvard University’s inauguration ceremony last month.
A federal judge in California said in a March civil law ruling that Trump “is more likely to have committed federal crimes in an attempt to obstruct the counting of ballots in the Congress of the Electoral College on January 6, 2021. The judge cited two statutes: obstruction of formal proceedings and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Trump denied all violations.
Schiff appeared on ABC’s This Week, Ruskin spoke on CNN’s State of the Union, and Kinzinger appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation.
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AP Congress correspondent Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Associated Press writer Jill Colvin of New York contributed to the report.
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For a full coverage of the January 6 hearings, go to
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