Trump Could Be Hit With 'Seditious Conspiracy' Charge, Former U.S. Prosecutor Says
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Amid a cascade of new details about what former President Donald Trump failed to do during the Jan. 6 insurrection, a former federal prosecutor speculated Monday that he could possibly be hit with a charge of “seditious conspiracy.”
“There is a crime making it illegal to corruptly impede or obstruct an official proceeding, which includes proceedings before Congress,” former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said on MSNBC, referring to the certification of presidential electoral votes that was held up by the Jan. 6 insurrection. “If he [Trump] had the power to stop that riot from happening and to permit the vote to go forward, his failure to do that could be that effort to corruptly obstruct the official proceeding.”
McQuade pointed to how Trump reacted during the insurrection.
“We’ve got this 187 minutes when he sat and did nothing, despite the fact that he knew that this violence and disruption was occurring. Is it because it was all part of a larger plan?” she asked.
McQuade also suggested that Trump could face charges other than obstruction.
“I think we could also look at conspiracy to defraud the United States — that just means trying to impede the normal functioning of government — all the way up to seditious conspiracy, which is a conspiracy to oppose by force the authority of the United States,” she said. “And so I think all of those potential crimes are in play.”
Both Cheney, the vice chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who chairs the panel, have discussed Trump’s inaction as he watched the violence at the U.S. Capitol on TV in the White House.
“The president was told, ‘You need to say directly to your people to go home, leave the Capitol.’ And so it took over 187 minutes to make that simple statement. Something’s wrong with that,“ Thompson said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
Cheney told ABC News’ “This Week” that Trump was transfixed by the violence on his TV screen and repeatedly resisted requests for him to intervene, including those made by his own family.
“We know as he was sitting there in the dining room next to the Oval Office, members of his staff were pleading with him to go on television to tell people to stop,” Cheney told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos Sunday.
“We have first-hand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence,” said Cheney.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
