From the Associated Press with this
headline:
“Committee
said it found evidence that Trump sought to obstruct an official proceeding —
in this case, the certification of the election results”
WASHINGTON — The House select committee investigating the
Capitol insurrection said that its evidence shows that Trump and his associates
“engaged in a criminal conspiracy to prevent Congress from certifying the
results of the presidential election, spread false information about the
outcome and pressured state officials to overturn it.”
The committee made the claims in a filing in response to a lawsuit by Trump’s former legal adviser John Eastman. Eastman, a lawyer who was consulting with Trump as he attempted to overturn the election, is trying to withhold documents from the committee as it investigates the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
The committee argued there is a legal exception allowing the disclosure of communications regarding ongoing or future crimes writing in their 221-page filing: “The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States. The evidence supports an inference that President Trump and members of his campaign knew he had not won enough legitimate state electoral votes to be declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential election during the January 6 Joint Session of Congress, but the President nevertheless sought to use the Vice President to manipulate the results in his favor.”
The committee wrote that as part of their filing submitted in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.
This court filing marks the committee’s most formal effort to link the former president to a federal crime. However, the actual import of the filing is not clear since lawmakers do not have the power to bring charges on their own and can only make a referral to the DOJ, and although the DOJ has been investigating last year’s riot, it has not given any indication that it is considering seeking charges against Trump.
The brief filed was in an effort by the committee to refute
attorney-client privilege claims made by Eastman in order to withhold records
from congressional investigators with Chairman Rep. Bennie (D-MS) saying in a
statement: “The Select Committee is not conducting a criminal investigation.
But, as the judge noted at a previous hearing, Eastman’s privilege claims raise
the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege
applies in this situation.”
The filing also details excerpts from the committee’s
interviews with several former top Trump aides and members of former Vice
President Mike Pence’s team, including his former
Chief of Staff Marc Short and former Chief Counsel Greg Jacob.
The committee said it found evidence that Trump sought to
obstruct an official proceeding — in this case, the certification of the
election results — “by trying to strong arm Pence to delay the proceedings so
there would be additional time to manipulate the certification results.”
In a January 6, 2021, email exchange between Eastman and Jacob, Eastman pushes for Pence to intervene in his ceremonial role of overseeing the certification of the electoral votes wherein Jacob replies: “I respect your heart here. I share your concerns about what Democrats will do once in power. I want election integrity fixed. But I have run down every legal trail placed before me to its conclusion, and I respectfully conclude that as a legal framework, it is a results-oriented position that you would never support if attempted by the opposition, and essentially entirely made up. And thanks to your bullsh*t, we are now under siege.”
In other transcripts
released as part of the filing, former senior DOJ official Richard Donoghue described
trying to convince Trump that claims of election fraud were pure fiction
saying: “I told the President myself that several times, in several
conversations, that these allegations about ballots being smuggled in a
suitcase and run through the machines several times, it was not true, that we
had looked at it, we looked at the video, we interviewed the witnesses, and it
was not true.”
At one point, Donoghue said, he had to reassure Trump that
the DOJ had investigated a report that someone has transported a
tractor-trailer full of ballots from New York to Pennsylvania. The department
found no evidence to support the allegations, Donoghue said.
The transcripts shed colorful detail on a contentious January 3, 2021, meeting at which Trump contemplated replacing his Acting AG, Jeffrey Rosen, with an assistant who promised to get to the bottom of the president’s bogus claims of election fraud.
That assistant, Jeffrey Clark, had been the department’s top
environmental enforcement lawyer for a period. That fact that led to some derision from
colleagues at the meeting when it was pointed out that Clark had not been a
criminal prosecutor.
That led to Donoghue saying: “And he kind of retorted by saying, ‘Well, I’ve done a lot of very complicated appeals and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that.”
And I
said: “That’s right. You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back
to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill.”
The filing was the most comprehensive preview of the
findings of the committee, which is investigating the violent insurrection of
Trump’s supporters in an effort to ensure that nothing like it happens again.
While the panel can’t pursue criminal charges, members say that they want the
public to have a thorough account of the attack, in which hundreds of people
brutally beat police, pushed through windows and doors and interrupted the
certification of President Joe Biden’s win.
So far, lawmakers and investigators have interviewed
hundreds of people, including members of Trump’s family and his Former Chief of Staff,
Mark Meadows, as well as his allies in the seven swing states where the former
president tried and failed to prove he won.
The panel has also sought out information from members of
Congress and subpoenaed records and testimony from top social media platforms
they believe had a hand in the spreading of election misinformation.
The committee is expected to fully release its findings in a
lengthy report or series of reports later this year, ahead of the midterm
elections. The panel is also planning days or weeks of hearings starting in
April with some of the witnesses who testified.
My 2 Cents: Very conclusive article of the Committee’s work thus far – now the key and only question remaining is simple: “What the hell is the DOJ and more so, AG Merrick Garland doing about it to see the end results wherein Trump does not skate again like he does in so many civil and criminal cases?”
I believe that if Trump is not fully investigated, charged, prosecuted, tried and convicted (and skates) it will be the demise of law and justice in our country – just that plan and simple.
Stay tuned. Thanks for stopping by.
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