There is a good chance that US the Department of Justice will prosecute former President Trump for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to two Senate Democrats who said the DOJ “has all the evidence” they need to prosecute, The Hill reports.
The lawmakers said Trump committed federal crimes, but that the fact that Attorney General Merrick Garland has provided little indication about whether or not the department has its prosecutorial sights set on Trump doesn’t necessarily mean the former president isn’t likely to be charged.
They described Garland as someone who would make sure to run any investigation strictly “by the book” and will file an indictment when he’s ready to get a conviction because “any prosecution that fails to convict Trump risks becoming a disaster and could vindicate Trump, just as the inconclusive report by Robert Mueller’s team was seized upon as by Trump and his allies to declare his exoneration on a separate series of allegations.”
“Clearly what [Trump] did in the days leading up and the day of the Jan. 6 attack on Congress is criminal,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said, according to The Hill.
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Meanwhile, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said he believes that the former president’s actions on and before Jan. 6 likely violate federal law but that it’s up to the prosecutors at the Justice Department whether to charge Trump.
“They have all of the evidence at their disposal,” he said, adding that federal prosecutors are looking seriously at charges against Trump.
“My intuition is that they are” looking carefully at whether Trump broke the law, he said. “My sense is they’re looking [at] everything in a diligent way and they haven’t made a decision.”
“Garland is a sort of by-the-book guy,” said Kaine. “You have prosecutors who will talk about things, kind of give you status reports along the way. But that’s not really the most professional things for prosecutors to do.
“What prosecutors usually do is they analyze all the evidence and then they either file an indictment or charge or they say nothing,” he said. “If they file an indictment or charge, they let that speak for itself and they don’t editorialize about it.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said “I think anybody who it’s proven had a role in the planning of [the Jan. 6 attack] should be prosecuted, not just the people who broke in and smashed the window in my office and others.”
“I think anybody that’s shown to have had a role in its planning absolutely should be prosecuted,” he added. “I mean it was treason, it was trying to overturn an election through violent means.”
Asked whether Trump broke the law, Brown said “I’m not going to say he’s guilty before I see evidence,” but he also said there’s “a lot of evidence that he was complicit.”
Trump could also face prosecution at the state level, The Hill note:
“Georgia’s local prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, told The Associated Press this past weekend that she is leaning toward asking a special grand jury to authorize subpoenas to advance her investigation of Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger.
She said a decision whether to bring criminal charges against Trump would likely be made in the next six months.
Trump is also under criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and New York Attorney Letitia James for possible bank and insurance fraud.
