Home Headline Donald Trump Says Criminal Prosecution Recommendation Empowers Him

Donald Trump Says Criminal Prosecution Recommendation Empowers Him

Former US President Donald Trump said being accused of four crimes by the commission investigating the attack on the Capitol strengthens him and accused the panel of wanting to prevent him from running for president again.

“These people do not understand that, when they come after me, people who love freedom defend me,” wrote the former president this morning in a statement, shared on his social network Truth Social. “It makes me stronger. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

Trump argued that he tried to send in 20,000 troops to prevent violence on Jan. 6 and that he went on television to tell everyone to go away. He spoke of a “Democrat investigation agency” that wants to prevent him from running again “because they know I’m going to win” and that the accusations are “a partisan attempt” to put him and the Republican party aside.

At the last public hearing and after an 18-month investigation, the commission investigating January 6th voted to send the Justice Department a recommendation for prosecution for four crimes it said were committed by Donald Trump: incitement to insurrection, conspiracy to defraud , obstruction of Congress, and misrepresentation.

Reactions to this unprecedented advance in the history of the United States ranged from those who denounced political motivations to those who praised the revealed evidence.

“No one is above the law. Not even a former president of the United States,” said Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Portuguese-American congresswoman Lori Loureiro Trahan also said, in a statement, that the decision “is proof that the pillars of our democracy are strong” and that there are still members of both parties “willing to honor their oath to the Constitution”.

But jurist and lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who represented Donald Trump during the first ‘impeachment’, told the conservative channel Newsmax that the commission’s recommendation “is a useless piece of paper”.

“Congress has no power to recommend indictments,” noted the emeritus Harvard professor, saying there is a provision in the Constitution precisely against this. It is a prohibition of “bills of attainder”, or acts of the legislature that declare a party guilty of a crime without going through the trial process.

Dershowitz argued that, by the separation of powers, “Congress is not allowed to say who should be charged.”

Dick Morris, a former adviser to Bill Clinton who turned Trump supporter and wrote a book about his 2024 return, characterized the commission’s recommendations as gimmicks and said they were unlikely to be accepted by the Justice Department.

“This is obviously a gimmick and therefore obviously wrong,” he told Newsmax. “To say he fomented an insurrection is just absurd. And it’s obvious, as it was in the grounds of both impeachments, that voters understand this, in particular Republican voters.”

Also Shelley Moore Capito, who will assume the Republican leadership of the Senate policy committee, considered that the work was “obviously politicized” and had never seen “Congress to instruct in this way” the Department of Justice.

On Fox News, conservative jurist Jonathan Turley pointed out that the commission failed to build a strong case in terms of actions liable to criminalization and said the panel’s decision was risky because the Justice Department could contradict it.

“This commission promised that there would be new evidence. There were some videos that we had not yet seen, but there was no direct evidence of a criminal act by the previous president,” he said. The jurist considered that Donald Trump’s behavior was not criminal, although it was reckless and reprehensible.

“The problem is, I don’t think convictions based on this evidence would stand up to judicial scrutiny,” he continued. “The biggest problem lies in the accusations based on the president’s speech”, he considered, saying that the words spoken by Trump minutes before the insurrection are protected speech. “They fall short of the standard set by the Supreme Court for the criminalization of speech.”

Already the leader of the Republican minority of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, reacted with few words to the outcome of the commission’s work, in statements to journalists. “The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day,” he said. “Other than that, I don’t have any immediate observations.”

Shortly before the commission’s decision was known, which had a unanimous vote in recommending Trump’s criminal prosecution, former Vice President Mike Pence had said on Fox News that this would be “terribly divisive for the country” and that this festive season people want above all to heal the wounds.

“I think that the president’s actions and words on January 6 were reckless”, said the former ruler. “But I don’t know that it’s criminal to take bad advice from lawyers, so I hope the Justice Department is careful.”

Rolling Stone magazine wrote an article about it with the title “Mike Pence says the man who wanted him dead on January 6 should not be charged”.

Republican Andy Biggs, the subject of an investigation recommendation to the House Ethics Committee for refusing to comply with a subpoena, reacted dismissively in a statement, calling the committee “a charade” that never really needed his testimony and that of others republicans.

“They only wanted our testimony so they could edit and misinterpret our statements to advance their false narratives, as they did with many other witnesses,” he accused. “The January 6th commission defamed my name and character, and I look forward to reviewing its documents, publishing its lies and clarifying the truth at the 118th congress.”

Scott Perry, another congressman similarly targeted, reacted via spokesman, calling the commission a soon-to-be-defunct “petulant kangaroo court.”

The recommendation is non-binding and the Department of Justice does not have to respond or act on it, but the commission has been collaborating with the department led by Attorney Merrick Garland, sharing evidence and testimony it has collected.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former White House communications director in the Trump administration, told CNN that she was especially interested in seeing whether the Justice Department would investigate what she thought were the attempts to interfere with witnesses that took place during the commission work.

“I think it was strategically advised not to recommend the names of White House officials for prosecution, because that will create a trampling of people who may be legally exposed and lead them to collaborate with the Department of Justice.”

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