WASHINGTON — A member of the House’s Jan. 6 panel said there’s enough evidence to charge Donald Trump with insurrection and other crimes.
Rep. Adam Schiff, who sparred with Trump in his role as House Intelligence Committee chair, said the former president’s actions surrounding the 2021 attack on the Capitol by his supporters are “a pretty good match” for a criminal insurrection charge.
“In terms of the criminal statute, if you can prove that someone incited insurrection — that is, they incited violence against the government or they gave aid and comfort to those who did — that violates that law,” Schiff said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The House committee plans to meet at 1 p.m. EST Monday in Washington to vote on its final report and referrals for criminal charges and other sanctions. That will include votes on recommendations that Trump be prosecuted for insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the U.S., according to a person familiar with the discussions.
Referrals are also being considered for several former Trump associates, including his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, legal advisers John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, and Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark.
“We want to focus on those for which we believe there’s the strongest evidence,” said Schiff, a former prosecutor.
“This Kangaroo court has been nothing more than a Hollywood executive’s vanity documentary project that insults Americans’ intelligence and makes a mockery of our democracy,” a spokesman for Trump said earlier in a statement.
Schiff declined to confirm in the CNN interview what charges the panel would vote on, though he’s on the subcommittee that prepared recommendations on charges for the meeting.
He said he believes Trump “violated multiple criminal laws” and questioned why the U.S. Justice Department hasn’t already prosecuted the former president for crimes related to Jan. 6 and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
“I do worry that it may take until he is no longer politically relevant for justice to be served. That’s not the way it should be in this country,” Schiff said. “I find it hard otherwise to explain why almost two years from the events of Jan. 6 and with the evidence that is already in the public domain why the Justice Department hasn’t moved more quickly.”
