The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack revealed at its inaugural hearing that Donald Trump’s top Republican allies in Congress sought pardons after the January 6 insurrection, a major disclosure that bolstered the claim that the event amounted to a coup and is likely to cause serious scrutiny for those implicated.
The news that multiple House Republicans asked the Trump White House for pardons – an apparent consciousness of guilt – was one of three revelations portending potentially perilous legal and political moments to come for Trump and his allies.
At the hearing, the panel’s vice-chair Liz Cheney named only one Republican member of Congress, congressman Scott Perry, the current chair of the ultra conservative House freedom caucus, who sought a presidential pardon for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The select committee did not elaborate on which other House Republicans were asking for pardons or more significantly, for which crimes they were seeking pardons, but it appeared to show at the minimum that they knew they had been involved in likely illegal conduct.
The extraordinary claim also raised the prospect that the Republican members of Congress seeking clemency believed Trump’s election fraud claims were baseless: for why would they need pardons if they really were only raising legitimate questions about the election.
“It’s hard to find a more explicit statement of consciousness of guilt than looking for a pardon for actions you’ve just taken, assisting in a plan to overthrow the results of a presidential election,” Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee, told reporters.
Trump, according to videos of closed-door depositions played by the select committee, was told by his data experts he lost the election, told by former attorney general Bill Barr that his election fraud claims were “bullshit”, a conclusion Ivanka Trump said she accepted.
The admissions by some of Trump’s top aides are important since they could put federal prosecutors one step closer to being able to charge Trump with obstructing an official proceeding or defrauding the United States on the basis of election fraud claims he knew were false.
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Rawr
Article URL : https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/12/us-capitol-attack-panel-hearings-trump-allies-trouble