.BarbMcQuade: Five people died in the Jan. 6 attack. Here's the case for charging Trump with manslaughter.
of the armed forces. On Jan. 6, when Trump was alerted that the situation at the Capitol was getting “out of control,” he had a duty to call in the National Guard to quell the violence. According to Joint Chiefs of Staff ChairmanTuesday, we heard testimony from Cipollone
that Trump could have gone to the press briefing room and made a statement on camera asking the mob to disperse, and that Trump refused. Trump also had a direct communication channel in the form of Twitter, but instead of posting a tweet asking the crowd to go home,that Pence lacked the “courage” to toss out the election results. It was not until the 187th minute of the riot that Trump put out a video-recorded statement asking the mob to go home.
Third, prosecutors would need to prove that his act of omission caused one or more of the deaths. To prove causation, prosecutors must generally prove that the death was a reasonably foreseeable result of the act of omission. Here, it was reasonably foreseeable that a mob of thousands of angry people, whom Trump knew were armed and angry, would cause the death of another person.
Even if this result was not foreseeable during Trump’s speech on the Ellipse, it certainly became foreseeable during the 187 minutes that he sat watching television coverage of the mayhem at the Capitol. And even if it cannot be established that Trump caused all five deaths, such as those resulting from medical emergencies, it seems clear that he caused at least some of them.
Even if this result was not foreseeable during Trump’s speech on the Ellipse, it certainly became foreseeable during the 187 minutes that he sat watching television coverage of the mayhem., prosecutors should generally charge the most serious, readily provable offense. Arguably crimes involving the loss of life are the most serious, readily provable offenses that occurred on Jan. 6. But one could also argue that crimes designed to undermine our democracy are also serious offenses.
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