Inside a December 2020 Oval Office meeting: The hearing brought to life a high-stakes Oval Office meeting in December 2020, where Trump considered firing the acting attorney general and installing Clark, who was willing to use the powers of federal law enforcement to encourage state lawmakers to overturn Trump's loss. Here are takeaways from Thursday's hearing: The witnesses were former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue, and Steven Engel, who led the department's Office of Legal Counsel. Three Trump appointees testified in-person on Thursday, joining a growing list of Republicans who have gone under oath to provide damning information about Trump's post-election shenanigans. He has denied any wrongdoing related to January 6. The hearing kicked off mere hours after federal investigators raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, who was one of the key Justice Department figures who was involved in Trump's schemes. 6 select committee's latest public hearing on Thursday shed considerable new light on former President Donald Trump's attempts to weaponize the Justice Department in the final months of his term as part of his plot to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power. Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg/Getty Images/Pool All of the states Trump wanted to contest were won by Joe Biden.Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, left, swears in Richard Donoghue, former acting deputy US attorney general, from right, Jeffrey Rosen, former acting US attorney general, and Steven Engel, former assistant US attorney general for the office of legal counsel, during a hearing in Washington, D.C on Thursday. The slate of false electors in Michigan - all 16 of them - have been charged by the attorney general in that state with forgery, among other counts, for signing false certificates. It is interesting that the special counsel does not entirely blame the false electors, some of whom are described as being “tricked.” Here’s an even more in-depth look at the fake electors by CNN’s Marshall Cohen. Here’s some background reading on how the scheme was supposed to work. Much of this we know from the House select committee that investigated January 6 and also public statements from Trump officials. The law was updated in late 2022 with bipartisan support to clarify that, no, the vice president cannot simply reject electoral votes.įake electors scheme, explained. It ultimately resulted in a compromise to effectively end the Reconstruction period. The law that governs the counting of electoral votes was passed in in the wake of the contested election of 1876, which coincidentally featured multiple states with contested electoral votes. The law prohibits two or more people from conspiring to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in … the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” It carries a 10-year maximum sentence of imprisonment, unless the conspiracy results in death.Įlectoral Count Act. Per Sneed: Trump also faces a conspiracy against rights charge under a Reconstruction-era civil rights law. The appropriateness of using the law to prosecute the rioters has been litigated in the Capitol breach cases.Ĭivil rights law. Those counts carry a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment. More from Sneed: Two of the counts Trump is facing relate to obstruction of an official proceeding - brought under provisions included in a federal witness tampering statute that has also been used to prosecute some of the rioters who breached the Capitol on January 6. Same charges for some January 6 defendants. CNN’s Tierney Sneed notes: The first count Trump is facing, conspiracy to defraud the United States, is brought under a statute that can be used to prosecute a broad range of conspiracies involving two or more people to violate US law.
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