Select committee is investigating Capitol riot as 'conspiracy to commit a coup’: Adam Schiff

The House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack the U.S. Capitol is investigating the day as a coup attempt, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) explained on MSNBC on Wednesday.

Schiff, a former federal prosecutor who chairs the House Intel Committee and was the lead impeachment manger in Trump's first trial, was interviewed by MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace.

Wallace noted that Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said that the 6-part plan to install Trump as president after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden "outlines a coup" attempt — and called out Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) as "the go-to options for doing their overthrow."

Describing Jan. 6 as a coup is nothing new for Kinzinger, an Air Force Lt. Colonel currently serving in the Air National Guard. The Illinois Republican described the events as a coup as they happened.

"Is the select committee investigating a conspiracy to commit a coup?" Wallace asked Schiff.

"Yes," he replied. "And i think Adam is exactly right."

Schiff went on to explain that the commission isn't just looking at the Capitol riots but also the "quasi-legal means" Trump and his allies used that "so undermine our democracy that it creates a crisis and it falls apart."

"This is what the Republicans tried to do, the Trump campaign and administration tried to do with this memo, but it's also what GOP party leaders are trying to do around the country by stripping independent elections officials of their powers and handing them to partisan boards, so they can succeed where they failed with this attempted coup," he continued.

"That is, if they can't disenfranchise enough people and they still lose, this gives them the chance through the patina of legality to overturn the results. And that, to me, is the most desperate risk that our democracy faces," Schiff said.