The House Jan. 6 committee has now heard dramatic testimony from former White House aides and others about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
about Trump’s actions before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. She said Trump was informed that there were armed protesters at his morning rally before he stood onstage and told them to "fight like hell" at the Capitol. ThenTrump's aides knew there could be legal consequences.
to take up his cause. He pressured the states — asking Georgia's secretary of state to "find" votes, for example — and Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the joint session of Congress that day.Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testifies about an alleged tantrum by the president in which he threw his lunch at the wall, a display she said was not uncommon.
Federal law, for instance, makes it a crime to incite, organize, encourage or promote a riot like the one that enveloped the Capitol. But that's a high bar for prosecutors to clear. Trump's exhortation to "fight like hell" could be construed as a more general call to action. He was acquitted by the Senate of an incitement charge in his impeachment trial after the insurrection.
Some legal experts say it doesn’t matter if Trump believed the election was stolen or not. But others say much would depend on the president’s intent and state of mind and whether he supported activities he knew to be unlawful. Though witnesses have testified under oath about telling Trump he had lost, it would be hard to prove what he actually believed.
One of the more striking accounts from Hutchinson — that Trump, irate at being driven to the White House instead of the Capitol on Jan. 6, tried to grab at the steering wheel of his presidential vehicle — was something she heard second-hand, likely inadmissible before a jury. Some Democrats in Congress have been pressing Garland to act. The Jan. 6 committee itself could make a formal criminal referral based on its more than 1,000 interviews. The Justice Department wouldn’t have to act on such a referral, but it has been pressuring the panel to hand over its interview transcripts as it weighs making its own case.There's no legal bar to prosecuting Trump as a former president.
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