Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman on Friday offered a blunt assessment of the January 6 Committee investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, including the legal firestorm surrounding GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham over his involvement in the scheme. He also offered a solution to force Trump to testify after being served with a subpoena.
Speaking with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, the prominent lawyer tied Graham to Trump’s inner circle’s plot to keep the former president in power via criminal means.
Akerman’s assessment came as Graham asked the Supreme Court to block a subpoena from a grand jury empaneled by the Fulton County, Georgia district attorney to investigate efforts to invalidate President Joe Biden’s win in that state.
“It’s almost written as an indictment, this letter,” Akerman said. “It is the outline for an indictment of Donald Trump. I mean, it’s basically, you did this, this, this, you killed your brother, killed your son, robbed the bank, and oh, by the way, will you come in and talk with us and if you’re going to take the Fifth Amendment, meaning that truthful answers to any questions we ask to you would intend to incriminate you, we want to know in advance. So it really lays it out. I mean, this puts together, in a very succinct letter with three pages, everything that the January 6th Committee has come up with.”
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“If you take it as a whole, I mean, you’ve got Donald Trump, who’s going to try and protect himself. You’ve got Lindsey Graham, who’s a key piece in the evidence, the chain of his conversation with Brad Raffensperger in the state of Georgia, and trying to find votes to get him elected in Georgia,” said Akerman. “You put those together and you’ve got people, I mean, Steve Bannon — you’ve got a masterful coverup.”
Akerman added that the challenge for prosecutors is that there’s a concerted effort by Trump’s allies to “hide the ball” and run out the clock until Republicans can win control of Congress in a couple of weeks.
“Donald Trump is not going to cooperate. He’s not going to testify,” said Akerman. “Anything he says will be used against him and will wind up having a perjury charge, so I don’t see him cooperating. The question is, you know, how aggressive is the committee going to get? They’re not going to go to court and try and enforce that subpoena because it’s going to run out the clock.
He added: “I mean, it looks like now that the Republicans are more likely than not to take the majority in Congress … if that happens, the committee is disbanded, and any effort in court would be immediately nullified, so they really have a choice. They either try and force them in through publicity, or they get the sergeant-at-arms out there, bring him in, sit him down at the table, and start asking him questions.”
Watch the segment below via MSNBC:
