Jamie Raskin Reveals Evidence Against Trump Ahead Of Jan 6 Hearing

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In a new interview for The Washington Post, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) offered a preview of upcoming hearings of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, where he serves as a member. In short, Raskin indicated the committee has gathered evidence indicating “a lot more than incitement” for the riot on Trump’s part.

As Raskin commented:

‘People are going to have to make judgments themselves about the relative role that different people played, but I think that Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events. That’s the only way really of making sense of them all… Commanding majorities [in Congress] found that [Trump] had in fact incited this insurrection, but the Select Committee has found evidence about a lot more than incitement here, and we’re going to be laying out the evidence about all of the actors who were pivotal to what took place on January 6.’

The committee will unfortunately not have the power to force a criminal prosecution of Trump for these potential offenses, but panel members are intent on essentially laying it all out there. The first hearing in the new set will take place this Thursday evening, and it will apparently provide a broad overview of what the riot panel has found. And Raskin and the panel are in a prime position to make revelations — investigators have heard from over a thousand people.

One recently particularly prominent witness who’s provided info to investigators about inner workings of the Trump administration around the time of the riot is Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide to then-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows. She’s apparently spoken with the committee three times and is likely to be among the witnesses appearing at the panel’s upcoming hearings. Others apparently likely to appear include former staffers to ex-Vice President Mike Pence. Pence himself hasn’t testified, and there’s no clear indication he’ll do so.

Meanwhile, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) also recently shared some of her thoughts about what’s at stake as the riot committee prepares for those hearings. (Cheney’s the committee’s vice chair.) “At this time of testing, we have to make a decision about whether we are going to put our love of this country above partisanship. There is no gray area. Every American should be able to say that we love our country more,” Cheney said on Twitter.

That’s really the crux of the issue: there are those currently active in American politics who’ve established that they’re fine with dumping basic democratic principles when it suits them. The riot committee has investigated the violence and its causes — basically meaning the months-long campaign by Trump and his allies to discredit and do away with the 2020 presidential election outcome. Trump could be said to have done a lot more than incitement — while the specifics remain to be sketched out, he, as president of the United States, planned on the forceful overturning of the election. And according to Hutchinson, Trump privately “suggested to Meadows he approved” of chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” that rang out from rioters, as CNN summarized her revelations to committee investigators.