During a recent appearance on MSNBC, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner put forward the possibility of a criminal case against former President Trump and others around him over seditious conspiracy for their efforts to overturn the presidential election results. To be sure, charges of conspiracy are among a slew of corruption-tied criminal charges that Trump could face at this point, per observers. Law Professor Albert Alschuler recently wrote in Just Security of how Trump could face criminal liability for his failure for hours to meaningfully intervene to stop the January mob violence at the Capitol. As Alschuler put it, “By violating his legal duty to do what he could to end the unlawful occupation of the Capitol, Trump became an accomplice to that crime.”
Efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the election outcome have been well-documented at this point. Amid those efforts, pressure was put on then-Vice President Mike Pence to intervene in the Congressional certification of the election outcome and stop Biden’s electoral votes — although vice presidents do not have such power.
Kirschner pointedly commented as follows:
‘It’s not that Vice President Pence didn’t have the courage or the spine to overthrow the election’s results. It’s that he didn’t have the law or the authority to overthrow the election’s results. There’s nothing in the 12th Amendment, there’s nothing in the Electoral College Count Act that gives a vice president the unilateral authority to just disregard or throw out the results of the popular vote, as he is presiding over the count of the Electoral College votes. What all of this shows us is that there is going to be so much evidence coming out, that will prove, I suggest, that guys like [John] Eastman and certainly Donald Trump, and Jeffrey Clark… are going to build the case for this being a criminal conspiracy, indeed, a seditious conspiracy.’
Check out Kirschner’s comments below:
Notably, what appears to be the main investigation into Trump’s election meddling that could result in criminal charges is not proceeding at the federal level. Instead, Atlanta-area District Attorney Fani Willis is looking into efforts by Trump and his goons to go after the election result in Georgia, where Biden won. Recently, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said that he “think[s] the Justice Department should be doing a lot more than what I can see” regarding Trump’s conduct surrounding the election.
