Congressman: January 6th Probe Is ‘Closing on in the Target,’ Donald Trump
Former president was the "mastermind" behind the insurrection, Raskin says
The federal investigation into the insurrection and riot of January 6, 2021, is “closing in on the target,” Donald Trump, according to a Democratic congressman who was a member of the House select committee also looking into those events.
Headed up by special counsel Jack Smith, the federal Justice Department is investigating the former president both for his handling of classified and sensitive documents as well as his actions on January 6, when Trump's most violent supporters descended on the US Capitol in a brutal and unlawful attempt to prevent Democrat Joe Biden from being certified as the next president of the United States.
Trump could well soon face indictment over his incitement of the violence that day, adding to the legal peril he's looking at.
“Well, it certainly seems like they’re closing in on the target and the person who undoubtedly set all of the events of January 6 into motion,” said Rep Jamie Raskin (D-Md), who served on the select committee which conducted its own painstaking and public probe into January 6 before being disbanded this year when Republicans took control of the House. “I mean, I recall one of the things we’ve learned in the January 6 Committee was that all of the right-wing protests against Biden were set up for January 20, for Inauguration Day, as if to say, ‘We are going to be your opposition, we question you,’ and so on. But not January 6th.
“But Donald Trump got everybody to switch it to January 6. He galvanized the focus on January 6. So, you know, Donald Trump really is the mastermind and the ringleader of the entire operation,” Raskin added. “And I think that it’s his intimates and his enablers in his vicinity who have now been called forward, including Steve Bannon and including Mark Meadows. So, nobody knows what’s going on with the investigative questioning, but it certainly seems like it’s a serious and methodical investigation.”
Bannon is a former White House advisor to Trump and Mark Meadows was Trump's White House chief of staff at the time of the insurrection.
Meadows began by cooperating with the House investigation before ultimately changing course.
“He was sort of doing the hokey-pokey, one foot in and one foot out, and when Trump got mad at him, he sort of pulled the plug on his participation,” Raskin said. “But you’ll recall from the January 6 hearings, Cassidy Hutchinson reporting in a lot of different ways that Mark Meadows was really privy to what was going on with Donald Trump, and when —”
Hutchinson was a young, junior staffer at the White House at the time of the insurrection and she delivered blockbuster testimony in a public hearing.
Smith and the Justice Department investigators could well offer immunity to Meadows over his culpability in exchange for cooperation as a witness against Trump.
“Well, yeah. I mean, look, Mark Meadows proved to be a very weak chief of staff. I mean, what I took from all of the people who testified about him before a committee was that he agreed with whomever was talking to him at the time. But fundamentally, he would go with whatever Donald Trump’s will was,” Raskin said. “So, he was really an empty vessel for Donald Trump’s determination to stay in office and overthrow the 2020 presidential election.
“So, I think Trump was obviously the mastermind and ringleader, not Mark Meadows, so I think it would make sense to, you know, figure out how to get his complete, comprehensive, truthful testimony. That makes sense to me,” added Raskin, who was a law professor in Washington DC before his election to Congress.
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