The Case for Donald J. Trump: Implications and consequences for the Constitution and the First Historical Assessment of the House Select Committee on Jan. 6, 2021

The nation and its political and legal systems are far from dealing with and moving on from the impact of Trump’s presidency, as scandalous stories are coming to a head. GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, alluded to that reality when she said on Sunday that the panel wants to avoid Trump turning his potential testimony into a “circus.”

Armed with new witness interviews and unreleased footage of the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, the panel is planning to argue that Mr. Trump’s lies about widespread voter fraud inspired far-right extremists and election deniers who present a continuing threat to American democracy.

But as the panel wrapped up what was likely the last of its evidentiary hearings on Thursday, it was not at all clear that it had persuaded the jury. The Americans who blamed Mr. Trump came away from four months of hearings with more evidence for their belief, while the people who started out in his camp mostly stayed there.

It’s no secret that the country is divided politically and partisanship, particularly among Republicans, has become entrenched. So despite the primary evidence — with testimony from Republicans who were aligned with Trump — people have been watching selectively.

As a result, a former president who tried to overturn a demonstrably free and fair election to hang onto power in defiance of the voters, the Constitution and nearly two and a half centuries of democratic tradition remains the dominant figure in his political party and the odds-on favorite to win its nomination to run again. The plot was documented extensively by the committee but it was unable to enforce accountability for it.

Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including, “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. You can give your opinion on CNN.

A Day in the Life of Congress: The December 6, 2018 Wyoming Outburst by a Democratic Senator and the New Republican Presidential Candidate

On the first question, committee members – including Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney, who lost her seat in Wyoming over her determination to hold Trump to account – have long argued that it is performing a service for posterity and have left a strong impression they want to fatally damage his future political hopes.

They all exploded when they saw a little help on the way. “Why don’t you get the President to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr. Attorney General, in your law enforcement responsibility,” Schumer barked at Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. The legislative leaders’ frantic efforts to restore peace were in marked contrast to Trump’s failure to take action as he watched the riot unfold from the confines of the West Wing of the White House.

In public hearings during the past four months, the bipartisan panel tried to uncover the full context of what happened that day.

In contrast to the Watergate scandal, which brought down the President in 1974, much of the campaign for Trump to win the 2020 election happened in the middle of the day.

There is no evidence that Trump’s actions are remorseful. He continues to spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and even before the 2022 midterms, he was planning to replay his election fraud claim if his favored candidates lost. He is running for President once again, and if he wins he could use his power to destroy America’s democracy.

The committee provided shocking evidence and information about how dangerous those months were when we knew it, even as they were writing the story.

The committee demonstrated that January 6 was not just a day of chaos but a full-blown day of chaos. It was premeditated.

The 2018 Election Committee: Reexamining the Trump-Bannon Campaign for Overturning the 2020 Election with the January 6 Marching Grenade Action Committee

As viewers could hear, Steve Bannon said to a group of non-identified associates that the former president would declare victory, which didn’t mean he was victorious, just that he would say he was. Trump is going to do stupid things if Biden is elected.

When told in subsequent weeks repeatedly by top election and legal advisers, such as then-Attorney General William Barr, that the claims of fraud were “bullshit,” Trump and his inner cabal ignored those warnings and moved forward with reckless abandon.

That story does not bode well. Witnesses testified that Trump knew that the January 6 protest over the 2020 election had spun out of control into violent chaos and was told repeatedly that he should ask rioters to leave. He did not do so for hours, even as he watched the carnage on television, according to the panel.

Chairman Bennie Thompson said that the Trump administration started a multi-part plan to overturn the election. The violence of January 6 was one piece of a larger strategy that included the rally.

In a hearing over the summer, the panel presented revelations that provided new insight into Eastman’s role as a central figure in the effort led by Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The pressure campaign that Trump directed at Pence to carry out was part of the reason that he was Vice President.

It is impossible to quantify how the committee’s work affected voters in November. But it kept evidence of Trump’s insurrection in the news all this year, even as the ex-president launched a new campaign seen by many observers as a way to cast the probes into his conduct as politically motivated persecution. This is useful as some pro-Trump Republicans, like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, attempt to distort information about the Capitol attack.

January 6 was just one part of a larger story. Although the panel is called the January 6 committee, it would be more accurate to call it a committee to investigate the campaign to overturn the 2020 election. The months between November 2020 and January 2021, are defined by this reframing.

The Big Picture: Donald Trump’s Final Hearing in Washington, DC, on January 6th, 2018, and the “Mean-Field’s View of the State”

To convey his state of mind, committee members made clear that Trump was not “duped” or “irrational,” as Cheney said Thursday. He knew where he was going and what he was doing. After the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit backed by the former president in December 2020, Trump, who the Secret Service said was “pissed,” was heard saying he didn’t “want people to know we lost.”

On January 6th, Trump ignored warnings of violence. He wanted to lead the troops to Capitol Hill. As attacks against Congress unfolded and his supporters pleaded with him to call off the troops,Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland reminded viewers that he sat passive, watching television. It was not that Trump didn’t act, but he didn’t want to. Can you believe it? Pelosi said something to Thompson that day.

In Thursday’s pivotal hearing, the committee made it clear that danger isn’t over in 2022, and that’s what they wanted to say. “There remains a clear and present danger to our electoral system and to democratic institutions,” Raskin said, “So, that is something that will come through in our final hearing. This is not ancient history we’re talking about; this is a continuing threat.” That continued threat exists on many levels. Republican candidates are making a big deal of election denialism in the upcoming elections.

Republicans who subscribe to this agenda are running for a number of top offices, including governor and secretaries of state in key states like Pennsylvania and Arizona, which will have an important role in overseeing future elections. And, finally, the former president remains the top contender for the Republican nomination in 2024.

It would suggest that her sacrifice of her career to the House GOP may be in vain, since many of her fellow Republicans didn’t acknowledge Cheney’s conduct. The public’s fascination with accountability was not as high as it was for instance, when the Senate Watergate hearings in the 70s helped bring down President Richard Nixon. The power of conservative media to distort what really happened on January 6 may help explain the dichotomy.

The committee was able to unpack some of the dark days that followed the election. They have been exposed in clear detail right in front of our eyes. The biggest mystery left is whether as a nation we will close our eyes and simply move forward without demanding accountability, justice and reform.

Donald Trump and his movement are posing new challenges to elections, the rule of law and accountability, leading to a new period of political turmoil.

Trump dropped his clearest hint yet Saturday of a new White House run at a moment when he’s on a new collision course with the Biden administration, the courts and facts.

After losing his reelection in 2020, Trump went away, but a catalogue of confrontations is vaulting him back into the center of US politics. It is likely to make the nation even more divided. And Trump’s return to the spotlight probably means next month’s midterm elections and the early stages of the 2024 presidential race will be rocked by his characteristic chaos.

The recent political and legal controversy involving the ex- President show that he could create even more upheaval than his four years in office if he chose to run for president again.

The ex-president’s past and his future are very much on the minds of voters as fierce differences are emerging between the Democrats and Republicans over policy.

In Washington, DC, New York, Georgia, Florida, and across the USA, prosecutors, investigators, and lawmakers will be interested in what Trump has to say about the legal issues facing the former president.

Are Democrats Getting Their Oasis? Asking the Ex-President to Come Around and Explain Why MAGA is Fading in Arizona

One of the ex-president’s favorite candidates is raising questions about the electoral system in Arizona, where he is a candidate for governor. Lake told AZTV7 on Sunday that he was worried that it might be not be completely fair.

A Republican majority in the House will mean a return to Trumpism, as the ex President holds on to the House GOP. Some leading “Make America Great Again” Republicans are already speaking of a possible drive to impeach Biden and have already signaled they will use their powers to investigate to rough up Biden for a possible clash with Trump in 2024.

Republicans in Washington are expected to expand their presence after the elections. Should they lose their races in two weeks, will Trump supporters accept the results? A number of Trump supporters are running on a platform of 2020 election fraud and are asking whether they will accept the results.

In either of the investigations, the ex-president hasn’t been charged yet. There are signs of an aggressive investigation by special counsel Jack Smith and the reality of a limited time period for any prosecutions before the election makes the sense that Trump is approaching a best case scenario much more real. The final report from the January 6 committee is set to be released next week and may contain criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.

Democrats have made their own attempts to return Trump to the political spotlight. President Joe Biden equated MAGA followers with “semi-fascism” and some campaigns have tried to scare critical suburban voters by warning pro-Trump candidates are a danger to democracy.

The Ex-President’s Trial and the Implications for the House of Representatives and the Senate Intelligence Committee: A Case Study Inferred From Cheney

But raging inflation and spikes in gasoline prices appear to be a far more potent concern before voters head to the polls, which could spell bad news for the party in power in Washington.

The ex- President told his supporters at a rally in Texas on Saturday that he will probably have to do it again.

“It may take multiple days, and it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves,” Cheney told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“This isn’t going to be, you know, his first debate against Joe Biden and the circus and the food fight that that became. This is a very serious set of issues.

The former president would find it difficult to dictate the terms of the exchanges and control how his testimony is used if he Video testimony over an intense period of days or hours is likely to be unappealing to the former President.

This could become an academic topic. Given the possibility of a Trump legal challenge to the subpoena, the issue could drag on for months and become moot since a possible new Republican House majority would likely sweep the January 6 committee away as one of its first acts.

If a moment of truth is approaching for Trump, the same can be said of Garland and the DOJ. Any decision to charge the former president in either case is bound to trigger a furious political chain reaction. Given that the ex-president’s movement has already shown it sees violence as a legitimate tool to express a political grievance, things could get especially dangerous.

A decision to prosecute an ex-president for not being a second term president would cause quite a bit of controversy. If there is evidence of a crime, sparing him from accountability is a negative signal for future presidents with strongman instincts.

His attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, his handling of sensitive government documents and his family business are all under investigation by the federal and state governments.

Trump and his company deny any wrongdoing or criminality in all matters, state and federal, and have aggressively maintained innocence. The two lawsuits that Trump had won dismissals of this week were brought by his niece and his former attorney.

Legal experts think that the one regarding classified documents may move ahead sooner after several failed attempts by Trump in court to delay it. A judge on Monday dismissed Trump’s case challenging the Mar-a-Lago evidence collection and appointment of a special master. More than 100,000 records, including documents classified as secret, were found among the items in Trump’s private office and beach club.

According to the sources, the panel is considering criminal referrals for former White House chief of staff MarkMeadows, right wing lawyer John Eastman, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Criminal referrals will come in the form of a letter from Thompson to the Justice Department making the case for prosecution. The referrals, which hold symbolic and not legal weight, are part of a longer list of recommendations from the committee’s subpanel of lawyers.

Bennie Thompson said that accountability could only be found in the criminal justice system. The work of this committee will allow agencies and institutions charged with ensuring justice under the law to use information provided to them by us.

We decided to look at some of the evidence that we had collected because we could not overlook people who were involved in criminal activities.

Anyone that engages in criminal activity needs to be held responsible for it, said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic Representative from Maryland, on Thursday. We are going to spell it out.

The gravest offense in constitutional terms is the attempt to subvert a presidential election. “Subsidiary to all of that are a whole host of statutory offenses, which support the gravity and magnitude of that violent assault on America.”

The 2020 Subcommittee on Communications with the Media: Reporting the Associated Subpoena to Jeremiah Meadows

The subcommittee has a Republican and a Democratic member, who are also the panel’s vice chair.

The committee subpoenaed Meadows for documents and testimony in September of last year, and he handed over more than 2,000 text messages he sent and received between Election Day 2020 and Joe Biden’s inauguration. According to the text messages, the top Republican Party officials and Trump’s family members discussed how to handle the situation after the election and in the middle of the insurrection.

Raskin also suggested Thursday that previous referrals to DOJ for contempt of Congress would not impact how the panel handles these criminal referrals.

“We obviously did contempt of Congress referrals earlier and there’s a whole statutory process for making that happen,” he said. “But you know we will explain our decisions in detail – why we are making certain kinds of referrals for certain people and other kinds for others.”

In the midst of a legal fight to obtain Eastman’s emails, a federal judge ruled in March that Eastman, along with Trump, may have been planning a crime as they sought to disrupt the January 6 congressional certification of the presidential election. The FBI seized Eastman’s phone in June as part of its criminal investigation according to a court filing from Eastman.

In the hearing, the committee walked through how Eastman put forward a legal theory that Pence could unilaterally block certification of the election – a theory that was roundly rejected by Trump’s White House attorneys and Pence’s team, but was nevertheless embraced by the former President.

The former DOJ official was facing a criminal contempt of Congress referral at the time after he refused to answer the committee’s questions at a prior deposition. The committee voted to refer Clark to DOJ because his lawyer told them that he planned to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions in order to avoid incriminating him.

The panel dedicated much of a June hearing to Clark’s role in Trump’s attempts to weaponize the Justice Department in the final months of his term as part of the plot to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power.

In particular, the committee focused on the efforts of Rep. Scott PERRY, who helped Clark get to the White House.

CNN has previously reported on the role that Perry played, and the committee in court filings released text messages Perry exchanged with Meadows about Clark.

“He wanted Mr. Clark – Mr. Jeff Clark to take over the Department of Justice,” Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Meadows aide, said about Perry in a clip of her deposition that was played at that hearing.

Giuliani, Trump’s onetime personal attorney and a lead architect of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, met with the panel in May for more than nine hours.

The recommendations under consideration of obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the federal government match allegations the select committee made against Trump and his elections attorney John Eastman in a previous court proceeding seeking Eastman’s emails. The judge agreed with the house that it could gain access to Eastman’s emails because he was involved in a conspiracy to prevent Congress from passing a bill related to the 2020 election.

But each sign that once slow burning efforts to work through the trauma of the post-election period are heating up brings a parallel warning that the future threat to truth and democracy remains acute. A key force in the incoming GOP House majority that is likely to try to shut down or obstruct investigations into Trump is in a controversy over the insurrection.

The Georgia Republican said that if she had her way, the mob that smashed into the Capitol would have been armed. She insisted she was joking when she replied to White House condemnations of her comments. This came days after the ex-president stepped up his voter fraud falsehoods by demanding the termination of the Constitution in a sign of how his potential second term might unfold if he wins the 2024 election and returns to the White House.

The FBI is racing against time: Jack Smith and his investigation of the January 6 phone call from an ex-President’s home under the Washington Post audio interview

There is one thing for certain. The DOJ is racing against time. With the 2024 campaign season underway and given the time it takes to mount a prosecution, Smith doesn’t have the luxury of years. This may help explain signs that his investigative pace is cranking up, following the recent reappearance of two ex-White House counsels before the grand jury.

Since the Washington Post published the full hour audio of that phone call 700 days ago, the DOJ has been trying to get around to subpoena him. When does it happen? Under Jack Smith.

If Trump’s legal team thought Smith’s appointment after a period spent abroad would make him less influenced by the January 6 attack, then it was guilty of wishful thinking.

Smith and his team of experienced prosecutors were bad news for Donald Trump according to a former US attorney, who was interviewed on NBC Sunday.

They would not have left their positions in government and private practice if there was any chance that the Justice Department would try to charge them. He predicts it will happen in a month.

Progressives have been irritated with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s methodical (read: slow) pace of pursuing charges against Trump. It’s up to the special counsel whether or not to bring charges.

“We’re now coming up against a timeframe in which it is a challenge to finish either case, if it is brought, to finish it before the election,” said CNN legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers on “Newsroom” on Monday.

The case on January 6 is likely to take more time because Rodgers believes they will bring a case on the documents side.

While Smith is following legal procedures, the political context makes it even more incumbent on the DOJ to demonstrate to Americans that it had no choice, for instance, to mount an unprecedented search at an ex-president’s home.

The House January 6 committee wants to make sure that their report on the former president is not seen as a whitewash by the GOP-led House next year.

That’s not a guarantee that Trump will be charged. The committee has no power over what the Justice Department does. The Justice Department’s own investigation of Trump has been going on, and is overseen by special counsel Jack Smith.

One consideration to bear in mind is that the committee’s highly choreographed televised hearings did not include any cross examination of witnesses, so it’s hard to tell how some of the most incriminating testimony about Trump’s behavior would hold up under the far higher evidentiary standard required in a court of law. Still, the report – and transcripts of its depositions expected to be sent to the DOJ – could be useful in fleshing out any criminal case by the special counsel, and in preparing the public for the possibility of any move by Smith to charge Trump.

The turn of the year and the first part of 2023 are starting to look like a moment of judgement for both Trump and the people who are investigating him.

According to the source, the final report could include additional charges for Trump. It will provide justification from the committee’s investigation for recommending the charges.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, criticized the committee in a statement as a “Kangaroo court” that held “show trials by Never Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history.”

Lofgren told Jake Tapper that the panel has made careful choices in crafting its recommendations and that they have to tie it all back to the facts.

It took a lot of time to research and understand the facts regarding the code sections and the recommendation, but I think it is very important that people understand what we are doing.

An investigation into the attacks on the U.S. Capitol: witnesses, evidence and the outcome of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation

When charging people for their involvement in the attack on the US Capitol, the DOJ mostly focused on the criminal statutes related to violence, obstruction of a congressional proceeding and seditious conspiracy.

The full report of the investigation could be made public on Monday. The appendices and transcripts tied to the more than 1,000 witnesses interviewed could be released on Wednesday.

One question hanging over the congressional committee, however, is whether the higher standard of evidence required by a court could lead prosecutors to believe it would be hard to convict the former president. While the committee’s hearings were packed with evidence suggesting a weeks-long pattern of wrongdoing by Trump, witnesses and evidence were not subjected to the kind of challenge and cross-examination seen in court, so it’s hard to judge the strength of any criminal case over Trump.

The panel is poised to be wiped out by the incoming Republican majority because they voted against certifying the election and who still whitewash that day nearly two years later.

A Capitol Police officer told how she had slipped on spilled blood during the melee caused when the ex-president’s mob smashed its way into the Capitol. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani claimed that election workers in Georgia were vote stealing, and that they faced racist threats. Rusty Bowers, the outgoing Republican speaker of the Arizona state House, testified that Trump’s calls for him to meddle with the election were “foreign to my very being.”

Republican politicians like Cassidy Hutchinson testified about what Trump did to the Constitution, even if they were with him in the West Wing. The ex-aide to White House chief of staff said it was unpatriotic. It was not American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”

“This is someone who in multiple ways tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist. The chair of the House Intelligence Committee said on “State of the Union” that this was a person who tried to interfere with a joint session inciting a mob to attack the Capitol. If that is not a crime, I don’t know what it is.

Two Years After He Left: Trump’s Name Could be Dragged Up by Senate Appropriations, or Did Trump Tell Me What Happened On Jan. 6?

Is it possible that Trump’s name will be dragged up by any referrals nearly two years after he left office?

At a time of high inflation and the aftermath of a once- in-a-century Pandemic, do the people of the US really care about what happened two years ago?

Still, Americans rejected many of Trump’s midterm candidates in swing state races who had amplified his false claims of 2020 election fraud, suggesting some desire to protect American democracy.

“This is a massive investigation that the committee has undertook. There are a lot of witnesses, huge amounts of evidence and former federal prosecutor Wanchun told CNN on Saturday.

“I think it’s the detail that accompanies the referrals themselves and the report that will give a roadmap to DOJ. DOJ has been late to this party and they are playing catch up but that detail could be very helpful to them as well and will put a lot of pressure on them.

If nothing else, future generations will be able to judge the determination of the panel members, especially its two Republicans, and the courage of witnesses who told the truth to try save democracy.

“Unfortunately we live in a world with a lie that is Trump’s truth where democracy is being challenged by authoritarianism,” the Illinois Republican said.

If America’s elected leaders don’t search for a way out, the great experiment will fall into the ash heap of history.

“[Trump] tried to take away the voice of the American people in choosing their president and replace the will of the voters with his will to remain in power,” Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in an October hearing. “He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6.”

Why does this matter?: The attack on Jan. 6 was investigated for a long time. The committee is also expected to provide its assessment of some of the weaknesses in the electoral system, which members argued enabled Trump and his allies to go as far as they did in their attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The electoral count act is one of the policy recommendations the panel will make.

What’s next: The select committee will dissolve at the end of the current Congress. Several members of the panel will not return to the House in 2023. The two Republicans and two Democrats are, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.

The Commission on Russian Interference and the Commission on Corrupt Crimes in the 2016 Democratic Moose. A Brief Report by J. J. Thompson

It’s long. The final report could be over 1,000 pages long, according to Thompson. A 400 page report from the special counsel on Russian interference in the 2016 election was published in 2019.

Elaine Luria, who is a member of the Committee, said she was appalled by the plan to create a big lie and pull every lever of government to corrupt an election.

The mastermind of this case should not be held accountable because they tried to corrupt the government and its processes.

“We’re not piling onto existing prosecutions,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said of upcoming criminal referrals. We’re trying to make sure that all the crimes of the most serious gravity are attended to.

Section 1512 (c) (2) of the US code states, “corruptly obstruct, influence or impede any official proceeding or attempt to do so.” Based on what the panel presented, it seems that Trump did everything he could to make sure the will of the voters was not changed before the mob attack on Congress.

Goldman was a former lawyer for the House impeachment team and said that the panel could have evidence that would not be considered by the Justice Department. Goldman stated that the panel could be looking at referrals for witness intimidation and false statements made under oath.

The Committee Vice Chair, Liz Cheney, raised concerns of witness tampering during one of the final hearings, but it’s not clear if the panel will pursue a related referral.

They want to make sure that the Department of Justice thoroughly examines all the evidence they have uncovered, to make sure that any charges should be brought, Goldman said.

NPR obtained a small piece of a draft script for the Monday meeting that shows the panel intends to accuse lawyers John and Kenneth of being tied to the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

As a Trump ally, Eastman led the effort to overturn Bidens win, while a central figure in the scheme pushing for a fake Trump electors in various states won by Biden.

The Committee to Investigate the 2016 September 11 Intifacial Intensity Attack in Washington, D.C.: Proceedings of the 13th Session of the House Ethics Committee

“They could be subject of both criminal referrals, but also referrals to their state bar association to review whether or not they should continue to have their bar license if they are making blatant misrepresentations in court filings or otherwise,” Goldman said.

The panel could also refer five House Republicans who were subpoenaed but refused to cooperate to the House Ethics committee: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

The ethics panel is unlikely to launch any new probes because the congressional session is about to end and Republicans will take control of the House.

McCarthy said at the press conference last week that he and his colleagues were not concerned about facing criminal referrals. We did nothing wrong.

So far, more than 900 people have been charged with crimes related to the attack. Law enforcement has arrested alleged rioters in nearly all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia.

The meeting, unlike previous gatherings, will not include a hearing with witnesses but will include a presentation and cover the names of people who are facing criminal and other referrals, Thompson said last week.

Thompson said that the committee could make ethics referrals, bar discipline referrals and campaign finance referrals, as well as criminal referrals.

The Rise and Fall of the United States: An Investigation into the First Two Presidents and Two Vice-Presidents (including Jeremi Suri)

CNN will broadcast a special coverage of the meeting at 12 p.m. It can be streamed live on CNN.com, CNN apps, or CNNgo without a cable log-in.

The Mack Brown Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin is held by the History Department and the LBJ School’s professor, Jeremi Suri. He is the author and editor of eleven books, most recently, “Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy.” He is one of the co-hosts of a radio show called This is Democracy. His own views are expressed here. Read more opinion on CNN.

The founding fathers of our republic would approve. In creating the United States government’s executive branch, the founders made a vow that the president must beferential to the law, not the law. The Constitution of the United States is the highest law of the land, and the president has to protect and defend it.

The founders did not anticipate a man of Trump’s destructiveness, but they set up a system to hold leaders accountable. Prosecuting law-breaking by elected officials affirms that they are equal to other citizens, with the same duties and limitations. It sets an example and encourages behavior that is not criminal.

As the president performs his duties, it is often impractical to try him for potential legal violations because of the limits of judicial access to confidential information. The president will be held responsible for any crimes if he leaves office, according to the Constitution. Impeachment and removal from office are political responses to misconduct, but they do not preclude other forms of legal accountability.

Criminal responsibility deters corrupt and arbitrary behavior. The Constitution does not discuss post-presidential legal privileges or immunities, which shows that the former presidents are ordinary citizens.

A number of presidents and vice presidents have been subject to criminal prosecution over the course of two centuries. In the 18th century, Alexander Hamilton was shot dead in New York and New Jersey by a Vice President. Burr was indicted again in 1807, after leaving office, for organizing an insurrection against the United States.

Spiro Agnew, vice president, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of tax evasion in 1973, after he tried to claim that he and the president were immune from prosecution. His immunity was denied by federal courts, and Agnew ultimately resigned.

Most relevant, President Richard Nixon could have faced criminal charges for his role in the Watergate break-in of Democratic Party headquarters and the subsequent conspiracy to cover it up. Confronted by the prospect of impeachment, Nixon resigned the presidency in August 1974, but the criminal investigations of his behavior continued. Nixon only escaped a potential indictment when his successor, President Gerald Ford, pardoned him weeks later. The pardon was necessary, Ford said, because the accusations hang like a sword over the former president’s head. Without a pardon, Ford expected Nixon would be indicted, and perhaps convicted. Ford wanted to avoid the political acrimony, especially for fellow Republicans, that would follow his predecessor’s legitimate prosecution.

There is no way that the same can be said for Trump. The evidence is overwhelming that he used the office of the presidency to try to overturn the 2020 election. He made sure that January 6, 2021, would be a violent day for Congress. He also took classified documents and then refused to return them under subpoena. The Justice Department substantiated the allegations, which were investigated in Congress.

In that most basic sense, I do not want Trump to be indicted. It’s not good for a nation to be unpopular trying to incarcerate its former leaders. There is also the risk that charging Trump with crimes would create a cycle of recrimination and revenge from Republicans.

Unlike Nixon, Trump has not retreated or changed his behavior since leaving office. He has called for the termination of the Constitution and all election laws to put him back into power. He thinks that those who attended the January 6 rally were well-wishers. And he has asserted the right to take government property and declassify confidential documents “just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it.” It seems Trump’s penchant for flouting norms, rules and regulations has only grown since he left the White House for Mar-a-Lago.

The Committee on Investigating the January 6 Corrupt Crimes: Why Donald Trump Shouldn’t be Charged with a Class of Crimes

High-profile crimes that are prosecuted prevent them from spreading and damaging democracy. Power can be corrupt and punishment is required to deter abuse, according to the founding fathers. The United States has been able to develop more law-abiding ways than in many other countries due to the prevention of the most extreme corruption.

The most pressing inquiry about Trump is whether he will ever be brought to justice for his rule-breaking conduct in business and politics. The question is very acute, given that the norm nearly destroyed US democracy.

Since many of the people who trashed the Capitol have already been sentenced, the issue of accountability got to the core of the comment. Trump has dodged paying political and legal prices since winning the White House, which is an example of a ringleader who skips past judgement. Former special counsel Robert Mueller, for example, unearthed a trove of information apparently showing Trump obstructed the Russia investigation but decided not to make a finding that the then-president committed crimes. Most Republicans in the Senate found reasons not to convict Trump when he was impeached twice.

Specifically, the panel said Trump should be charged with giving aid or comfort to an insurrection, obstructing an official proceeding, defrauding the US and making false statements. In an executive summary of its forthcoming final report, the committee argued: “The central cause of January 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump. The events of January 6 would not have happened if it were not for him.

The DOJ has its own investigation into the events surrounding the insurrection and will have to weigh whether the case stands up as well in a court of law as it seemed to in the Capitol Hill committee room on Monday afternoon.

Andrew McCabe, a former deputy FBI Director, said on CNN that the Justice Department should go further on every single person who was touched and interviewed by the committee.

The committee’s use of video excerpts and a lack of cross examination of witnesses mean that it is hard to get a full picture of the evidence. Some witnesses could be used by his lawyers in court if they made statements that were favorable to Trump.

CNN legal analyst Mr. Honig said that the lawyers of Trump were allowed to go through every word of the book. They are going to look for inconsistencies as well as look for a basis to attack the potential witnesses in court. That is what defense lawyers do.”

One particular complication for the Justice Department is that the nature of the insurrection and the involvement of a former president makes this an unprecedented case. A good defense team could argue that a prosecution is flawed because it tries to show that Trump did not mean to vote in the election. They could also claim that in telling supporters to “fight like hell” to save their country, he was simply exercising his constitutional rights to free speech. If special counsel Jack Smith and Garland decided to prosecute after considering Trump’s defense, they would have to satisfy themselves that the chances of obtaining a conviction were high.

Rod Rosenstein, who served as deputy attorney general in the Trump Justice Department, told CNN’s Erin Burnett that the most serious referral – accusing Trump of giving aid and comfort to an insurrection – would likely come up against a First Amendment defense.

“The Department would have to prove that the president’s comments were directed at inciting imminent lawless action. In other words, they’d actually have to prove he intended for a mob to engage in violent activity. It would be a challenge to prosecute him on that charge.

With the DOJ already faced with enormous pressure to investigate Trump, it’s hard to say that Monday’s events will add to the burden. But at the same time, if Garland were to disregard multiple referrals, he would be certain to infuriate Democrats who already think the department has been slow to pursue Trump.

Smith would benefit from preparing the public for the possibility of a former president going on trial if there was a graphic depiction of Trump in the committee. All coups are more like fragile developing world democracies and dictatorships.

No man can ever be in a position of authority again if he behaves like that at the time. Wyoming Republican said on Monday that he is not fit for any office.

The Jan 6 Committee on Criminal References: Liz Cheney, the Founding Father of Democracy, and the Story of the Day Donald Trump Left Behind

Editor’s Note: Jill Filipovic is a journalist based in New York and author of the book “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.” She can follow her on social media. Her opinions are her own and not those of this commentary. There is more opinion on CNN.

That conclusion was necessary two years after Trump sent a late night message to his supporters, promising that it would be wild.

The January 6 committee of the Department of Justice recommended that prosecutors be charged with conspiracy to make false statements, obstruction of Congress, aiding and abetting an insurrection, and assisting or aiding an insurrection. The report will provide justification for the charges, but a referral does not require the Justice Department to act.

The committee has spent months interviewing witnesses, evaluating the evidence and coming up with a full and coherent story about what happened on January 6, what happened after and who was responsible for it.

Liz Cheney laid out what happened that day. The peaceful transfer of power has been an American tradition since George Washington turned the office of the president over to John Adams.

In America’s proudest democratic history, no President has ever tried to install himself in office by denying the results of a free and fair election, Cheney said.

There are legal and political solutions to the problem of a former president encouraging his followers to subvert American democracy and break our national tradition of a peaceful handover.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/opinions/criminal-referrals-jan-6-committee-filipovic/index.html

Is Donald Trump the Democrat? And why does the US judiciary do its job? The case of criminal-referrals in the age of Trump

It seems like a foregone conclusion they will claim that the charges are politicized and trumped-up, leveled because Trump is a threat to the “swamp” and “deep state,” and that Democrats fear him so much they are willing to shut him down using any means necessary. An indictment would cause a lot of division in a nation.

But it’s worse to allow a former leader to destroy the nation’s trust in elections and its democratic processes. What will stop others from doing the same things if there is no penalty?

In the age of Trump, many parts of the Republican Party have been turned into strongholds of conspiracy theorists, racists, antisemites, liars and devotees to the cult of MAGA.

The GOP has become so intellectually bankrupt that it didn’t even bother with a platform in the last presidential election, instead essentially saying that its policy positions are whatever Trump wants. Some Republican politicians, and voters, seem to be fine with an America run by a despot, as long as it’s their guy.

Many Republicans think that a monster is created and not where it is going. They should demand that the US justice system does its job.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/opinions/criminal-referrals-jan-6-committee-filipovic/index.html

The Mueller investigation into the 2016 midterm election results: The case of Hope Hicks, a close friend of President Donald Trump, and the future of the American justice system

There is no perfect playbook for how to handle such a situation. But nations that have undergone major traumas need truth and reconciliation. They don’t paper over what happened.

The committee’s findings, along with its referral to the Department of Justice, are the first step. Taking the case to another vaunted American institution — our justice system, where defendants are presumed innocent and the prosecution must build a case for guilt beyond a reasonable doubt — is the necessary next one.

The committee can’t work on January 6. The committee is expected to be dissolved as Republicans take control of the House. So the legal ball will now be in the Justice Department’s court, while the political one rests with the voters.

When Trump announced that he was running for president, Attorney General Garland appointed Smith in order to show independence from the investigation.

“Ours is not a system of justice, where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass,” said committee member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., announcing the referrals.

They are close allies of Trump and they have resisted in the face of the rules in a way that is indicative of the style of US politics before Trump came to the scene.

It’s been obvious to those of us who’ve been covering Trump for a while, but it was confirmed by Hope Hicks, a communications adviser in the Trump White House who was very close to Trump.

In taped testimony, which we heard for the first time Monday, Trump’s former communications director said that she told him she was worried about the effect false claims of fraud were having on his legacy.

“He said something along the lines of, ‘You know nobody will care about my legacy if I lose,’ ” Hicks said, ” ‘So that won’t matter, the only thing that matters is winning.’ “

“He was—he had—usually he had pretty clear eyes,” said Bill Stepien, the Trump 2020 campaign manager, according to written testimony released in a report by the committee. He was realistic with the forecast and the uphill climb that we thought he had, so I think he understood, you know, where the race was.

Stepien added: “We’d have to, you know, relay the news that, yeah, that tip that someone told you about those votes or that fraud or, you know, nothing came of it. That would be our job as, you know, the truth telling squad and, you know, not — not a fun job to be, you know, much — it’s an easier job to be telling the president about, you know, wild allegations. It’s not easy to tell him that that wasn’t true.

Five Takeaways from the Final Jan 6 Committee-Hearing – Is Donald Trump Really Heavier Than He Thinks?

In a phone call in late November, Alex Cannon, a lawyer for Trump, told MarkMeadows that he found nothing to change the results in any of the key States.

These people are not the people the former president says were never Trump Haters or aligned with Democrats. In fact, the opposite is true in most of the testimony that’s been aired by the committee.

The Committee believes that other news outlets and commentators have discouraged viewers from watching because they do not know the full truth of the evidence addressed in the hearings.

The committee said it’s releasing summaries with each piece of evidence. The beginning of the hearing included a lot of previously seen testimony, similar to the recap of a prior season of a series onNetflix.

Eighty percent of Democrats and 55 percent of independents said they were paying attention to the hearings. A majority of Republicans said they were not.

They do not have to act on the committee’s recommendations. Do not expect to hear much about the special counsel’s progress as the DOJ tends to stay quiet on the details of ongoing investigations until they present them in court.

It’s going to be up to voters to decide. Trump will likely get support from his base. As we noted, Republicans have been the least likely to be paying close attention to these hearings. In a multi-candidate primary, Trump remains the front-runner for the GOP nomination.

But he’s in legal trouble in multiple states, not just federally, and many of his preferred candidates — and election deniers — lost in swing states. So whether it’s because of the chaos that often surrounds him, the threat he presents to U.S. democracy and faith in its elections, or simply because his brand is not a winner in competitive states where Republicans likely need to win to take over the White House and Congress, Trump is at his most vulnerable point since winning the presidency six years ago.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1144303656/5-takeaways-from-the-final-jan-6-committee-hearing

The House Judiciary Committee (Reply to the Report by Barton and Bose-Einstein on the Second Congressional Select Committee on Mueller’s Investigation)

Some members of this committee won’t be returning to Congress because of the backlash of Trump’s base and they hope the voters respond.