Days after the Jan. 6 Select Committee alleged that former President Trump and his allies “engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who serves on the panel, urged the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s efforts to push the Big Lie of a “stolen” 2020 presidential election.
Last week, lawyers for the Jan. 6 Select Committee alleged in a court filing that the former president and key allies engaged in criminal acts in trying to pressure former Vice President Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 election. According to the committee, Trump’s criminal culpability may include: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and common law fraud.
Appearing on CBS, Schiff said that the committee believes “there’s a good faith basis” to conclude that Trump “may have violated any number of federal laws.”
Schiff then implored the Justice Department to take action against Trump’s Big Lie efforts — particularly, the former president’s infamous call with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger (R) to “find” nonexistent votes.
“I do think that the Justice Department ought to be looking at these issues and ought to be investigating in particular — just to give one very graphic example — the former president on the phone with the secretary of state in Georgia demanding that he find 11,780 votes that didn’t exist, but the precise number he would need to overtake President Biden,” Schiff said.
“I think if anyone else had engaged in that conversation, they would be under investigation and it should be no different for the former president,” Schiff continued.
Schiff said that although the DOJ is “diligently pursuing” Capitol insurrectionists, it has yet to examine “multiple lines” of efforts to overturn the election results that “may have violated the law.”
Allegations of criminal acts from the committee came amid the panel’s efforts to obtain documents, such as emails, from John Eastman, the lawyer who advised Trump on the scheme to get Pence to refuse to count electoral votes. Eastman has asserted attorney-client privilege and work-product privilege in refusing to comply with the panel’s subpoena.
On Friday, a judge rejected Eastman’s attempt to stonewall the committee.
The DOJ has not signaled that it is planning to investigate key players in the conspiracy to subvert the 2020 presidential election more than a year after the deadly Capitol insurrection.
Watch Schiff’s remarks below:
