Former president Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the House January 6 select committee and former vice president Mike Pence are tantamount to admissions that he violated multiple federal laws during his push to overturn the will of voters after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden, Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin has said.
Mr Raskin, a select committee member who was the lead House manager during Mr Trump’s second impeachment, said Mr Trump more or less confessed to multiple crimes in myriad posts on his Truth Social platform and in a Friday speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual conference, during which he mocked Mr Pence for having been a “conveyor belt” during the 6 January 2021 certification of Mr Biden’s victory.
Speaking on NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday, Mr Raskin said the ex-president’s comments about the investigation and Mr Pence’s role on the day of the Capitol attack amounted to him “essentially saying, ‘Yeah, I did it, and I'll do it again’”.
Mr Raskin said the select committee’s contention is that Mr Trump has been confessing “all along” and stressed that letting him get away with what he did in the run-up to the worst attack on the Capitol since 1814 would be “inviting it again in the future”.
“To be a strong, self-sustaining, self-respecting democracy, we can't allow people to decide that they are above the law and that they are more important than our constitutional processes,” he said.
Asked whether Attorney General Merrick Garland should have any particular response to Mr Trump’s public statements regarding his actions before and during the Capitol attack, Mr Raskin said Mr Garland “really shouldn't be reacting to particular provocations by particular politicians or criminals” because it’s not “really the role of the attorney general”.
Mr Garland’s role, he said, “is to determine, based on the facts and the law, whether some – there's probable cause to believe that somebody has violated federal law in the United States and then to follow the criteria of the Department of Justice”.
“You've got to look at the culpability of the defendant, to what extent they acted willfully to do a criminal act. You've got to look at the gravity and nature of the offense. Of course, this offense has massive implications for the rule of law in America,” he said. “And you've got to look at deterrence, that is, do we want to move into a system of government where losers in presidential elections can try to overturn the election by nonviolent or violent means?”.
Pressed further on whether such a decision would be a “close call” for the attorney general, Mr Raskin said it would be difficult to come up with “a more grave offense”.
