Indicting Donald Trump for the assault on Capitol Hill or not? A dangerous dilemma for the United States

I should be prosecuted Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election?

The matter hangs over Washington after the series of House committee hearings they investigated the assault on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 which left five dead.

The answer, moreover, is of an urgent nature as Trump, 76, has provided clues you want to apply to the White House again in 2024.

The decision rests essentially with Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The accusation

Here’s a look at the potential allegations – and the political fallout – Garland will need to consider whether he decides to impeach Trump:

During eight televised public hearings, the House committee outlined a roadmap that could be followed by the Justice Department: Trump knew he had lost the election – his advisors told him and his legal moves were going nowhere – but he kept insisting that Democrat Joe Biden “steal” his victory.

Trump lobbied election officials in Georgia to “find” the votes he needed to win and tried to force then Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the election results at the Congressional ceremony on January 6, 2021.

Trump summoned his supporters in Washington and invited them to “fight with everything”, in a fiery speech near the White House.

After, lying for three hours and watched on television as his loyal supporters violently attacked Capitol Hill in an attempt to block the certification of Biden’s victories.

Legal analysts say Trump could face at least two charges: “conspiracy to defraud the United States”to demand the cancellation of the electoral results, and “the obstruction of an official procedure” for the attack on the Capitol.

The latter charge is the one that has been accused the most against hundreds of Trump supporters who have been arrested for raiding the hall of Congress.

In addition to the legal effects, perhaps an unprecedented trial against a former president it would cause a political earthquake in a country that is already brutally polarized between Democrats and Republicans.

“To impute a past and possibly future opponent of the current president it would be a cataclysm that the nation would not recover anytime soon, “says Jack Goldsmith, who was an assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration.

“It would be seen by many as a political retaliation”Goldsmith opines in a column for the New York Times, adding that it would threaten to “further ignite the already smoking partisan acrimony.”

Other legal scholars argue that not impeaching Trump would be just as damaging.

“I admit that impeaching a former president would generate a lot of social heat, maybe violence “Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe said. “But not accusing him would invite another violent insurrection.”

Rich Lowry, editor of the Conservative National Review, told the prosecution it would be “a catastrophic setback” and “it might even give Trump a political push.”

what’s coming

Attorney Garland was often questioned about his intentions, but he avoided giving any clues.

He recently said the January 6 investigation is the “most important” the Justice Department has ever had and that you should “do the right thing”.

“We must hold any person responsible for crimes accountable for attempting to overturn a legitimate election,” Garland said. “No one is above the law.”

A former prosecutor and judge, Garlan, 69, was appointed attorney general by Biden after he was denied a seat on the Supreme Court in 2016 by a then Republican-controlled Senate.

Garland has a reputation for being cautious and scrupulously fair, which even leads to speculation that he could appoint a special prosecutor for the Trump case in order to avoid any hint of a conflict of interest.

Tribe, who was Garland’s professor at Harvard, said he believes the attorney general will end up indicting Trump.

“He said he would go through with it if the evidence pointed him out, and that’s exactly where he’s headed now,” Tribe told CNN. “I think he will most likely be accused” Trump, who was indicted by the House for the January 6 uprising and then acquitted by the Senate, has spent weeks inveighing against what he calls a partisan “Kangaroo Court.”

Trump accused the committee in June of “mocking justice”.

“They refused to allow their political opponents to participate in this process, and they excluded all witnesses in defenseand to anyone who readily points out flaws in their version, “he said.

“The Democrats created the January 6 narrative to distract from a much broader and more important truth: that the elections were rigged and stolen,” he accused.

William Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University, says prosecutors must prove not only that Trump was “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but he intended to break the law.

“Not only did it hinder parliamentary procedure by making it virtually impossible to count the votes and certify the elections, but it was trying to do just that,” explains Banks.

Trump’s lawyers, Banks says, could refute the allegations by presenting their client as “a patriot who truly believed his election had been stolen and that he was trying to save the country.

AFP agency

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