Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Monday said the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has found evidence on former President Trump that supports “a lot more than incitement.”
The comment from Raskin, a member of the Jan. 6 panel, referenced Trump’s second impeachment in January 2021, when the House voted to impeach the then-president for incitement to insurrection.
The Jan. 6 panel is set to hold its first public hearing on Thursday, where Raskin said the committee will lay out information regarding individuals who played a role in the attack — including Trump.
“The select committee has found evidence about a lot more than incitement here, and we’re gonna be laying out the evidence about all of the actors who were pivotal to what took place on Jan. 6,” Raskin said during an interview with Washington Post Live.
Trump was impeached in the House by a 232-197 vote, with 10 Republicans joining all Democrats in sanctioning the president. The following month, however, the Senate acquitted him in a 57-43 vote. Seven Senate Republicans joined the entire Democratic caucus in voting to convict.
The select committee says Thursday’s prime-time hearing, scheduled to begin at 8 p.m., will feature new material and witness testimony from the nearly yearlong investigation, which has largely been conducted behind the scenes
Raskin on Monday told The Washington Post Live that this week’s hearing will “tell the story of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of power.”
Asked if Trump is at the center of that conspiracy, Raskin said “I think that Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events.”
“That’s the only way really of making sense of them all,” he added.
He noted, however, that “people are going to have to make judgments themselves about the relative role that different people played.”
The Maryland Democrat then pointed to Trump’s second impeachment, in which Raskin was the lead manager of the Senate trial.
“Of course the House and the Senate in bicameral and bipartisan fashion have already determined that the former president, Donald Trump, incited an insurrection by majority votes in the House and the Senate,” Raskin said.
“Although, Donald Trump wasn’t convicted by the requisite two-thirds majority, but commanding majority found that he had in fact incited this insurrection,” he added.
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Email shows fake Trump electors in Georgia told to conduct plan in ‘secrecy’
A Trump campaign staffer instructed a group of Republicans in Georgia who were planning to cast Electoral College votes for former President Trump to conduct the plan in “complete secrecy,” according to an email obtained by media outlets.
The Washington Post and CNN reported Monday evening that the email, written by Trump campaign Georgia operations director Robert Sinners, instructed the fake electors to tell security at the state capitol that they had appointments with two state senators.
“I must ask for your complete discretion in this process,” Sinners wrote.
“Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a win in Georgia for President Trump — but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion,” Sinners wrote.
The Post reported that the email was sent on Dec. 13, 2020 and instructed the electors not to “mention anything to do with Presidential Electors or speak to the media.”
The Hill has reached out to a representative for Trump and to the former president’s campaign for comment.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in January that the Department of Justice was investigating fake electors that supported Trump.
Fake documents were sent to the National Archives in December alleging electors for the Electoral College supported Trump in seven states President Biden had won.
People from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have since been subpoenaed to appear before the House Jan. 6 committee investigating the Capitol attack for their involvement with the alleged scheme.
The Jan. 6 committee is likely to highlight the newly uncovered email by a former Trump campaign staffer to fake electors during a primetime hearing on Thursday, the Post noted.
Sinners said in a statement that he was working on behalf of senior campaign officials and senior Republicans in the state where he was “advised by attorneys that this was necessary in order to preserve the pending legal challenge,” according to the Post.
Attorneys for Trump had for months after the 2020 election embarked on an ineffective legal campaign across the country in an attempt to overturn Biden’s victory, which ultimately failed.
Sinners, who now works for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger who fended off a Trump-backed primary challenger after Raffensperger refused to take up Trump’s effort to overturn the election in the state, added that his “views on the matter have changed significantly from where they were on December 13th.”
