January 6th Committee Says Donald Trump Definitely Broke The Law

According to findings released by the January 6th Committee this week, Donald Trump and several others definitely broke the law with their attempts to interrupt official government proceedings and when they tried to overturn the results of the election. This is the first time that the Committee has explicitly said that he broke the law, so now they will need to draft a criminal referral (when the investigation ends) and send it on to the Justice Department. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

In a court filing this week, the January 6th committee made it crystal clear that they believe Donald Trump broke the law. That's it, done, end of story. They believe there's three different instances where they can prove that Donald Trump and of course his attorney John Eastman broke the law. This is kind of the big breakthrough that we've all been waiting for, right? For the January 6th committee to come out and say whether or not Trump was committing criminal activities. And here it is huge, huge news. So the reason before I get into the specific laws they say he broke, the reason this was even filed in court and the reason we know about it, is because they want more information from John Eastman, Donald Trump's attorney. Now Eastman had provided plenty of documents over to the committee, but based on these documents, they say they need more. Now Eastman was able to previously withhold some information by claiming attorney client privilege. So that is what this court filing was about.

Asking the court, you have to waive attorney client privilege here because we have evidence of crimes. So what are they? The committee suggests Trump and some of his allies may have committed three distinct crimes. Obstruction of an official proceeding. In this case, Congress' January 6th session to count electoral votes. Defrauding the United States by interfering in the election certification and spreading false information about the results. And a violation of the district of Columbia's common fraud law. Now, according to Politico, to prove Trump committed felony obstruction, investigators would have to show he corruptly intended to impede an official proceeding and the committee says his work with Eastman to pressure Pence to take illegal acts could justify this requirement, particularly as Trump continued to spread claims of fraud that his own allies said were unfounded. So basically what they're saying here is that Trump knew the election wasn't stolen and that there was no fraud, but he continued to try to sell it to the public, to the government itself, Mike Pence.

And that was the fraud he committed against the government. So in order to do that, they do have to prove, as this says, that Trump knew there was no fraud and knew he legitimately lost the election. That shouldn't be too hard based on all of the other conversations that they've had with individuals. And according to reports, by the way, they have interviewed now 650 different individuals. So if none of those 650 individuals have any proof that they showed or told Donald Trump he lost the election, then they probably have nothing. But I'm willing to bet at least one out of those 650 people did in fact, tell the president, showed him, you lost. And I say that with confidence because the committee has already said, people did say that. So if they needed their evidence, they likely have it. We'll see if it holds up in court. They continue though. Even after the Capitol riot, but before the certification of the votes, Eastman made one final plea to convince Pence to stop the counting of electoral votes, acknowledging it would amount to a quote, relatively minor violation of the federal law known as the electoral count act.

So according to the Capitol riot committee, Eastman told Pence, listen, yes, this is illegal.