Washington, June 13 : Members of the House committee investigating the Capitol riots of January 6, said that they have collected enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against former President Donald Trump for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election, Khaleej Times reported.
The committee held its first public hearing last week, with members laying out their case against Trump to show how the then incumbent president who lost the election relentlessly pushed his false claims of a rigged election despite multiple advisers telling him otherwise and how he intensified an extraordinary scheme to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
Additional evidence will be unveiled this week in hearings that will demonstrate how Trump and his advisers engaged in a “massive effort” to spread misinformation and pressured the Justice Department to embrace his false claims.
Committee members indicated that their most important audience over the course of the hearings ultimately may be Attorney-General Merrick Garland, who must decide whether his department can and should go ahead and prosecute Trump.
Garland has not indicated how he might proceed, which would be unprecedented and may be complicated in a political election season in which Trump has openly flirted with the idea of running for president again in 2024.
A federal judge in California said in a March ruling in a civil case that Trump “more likely than not” committed federal crimes in seeking to obstruct the congressional count of the Electoral College ballots on January 6, 2021. The judge cited two statutes: Obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
