'DOJ has a lot of potential crimes they could charge' in Trump probe: reporter
Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" just hours after the Washington Post published an explosive report that Department of Justice has been quietly conducting a massive criminal investigation into Donald Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election, one of the co-authors of the report said the DOJ appears to have multiple crimes that can choose from to indict the former president and some of his associates.
Speaking with MSNBC host Willie Geist, the Post's Carol Leonnig provided a ten minute summation of what the DOJ is looking at, telling the host, "The Department of Justice was more keenly looking and asking about Donald Trump. That came it a head with the appearances of [Mike Pence aides] Marc Short and Greg Jacob, and I suspect there are other grand jury appearances that we are not aware of, so stay tuned on that."
Pressed by co-host Jonathan Lemire about what they have found so far, and where Attorney General Merrick Garland is headed, the Post reporter stated, "So the first track, seditious conspiracy to obstruct a government proceeding. You know from your own reporting that there are a number of steps that Donald Trump took using the levers in the Oval Office at his disposal to try to block the peaceful transfer of power, to try to block the certification of the election, and the conspiracy charge that the Department of Justice is reviewing is what kind of fraud and conspiratorial agreement may Donald Trump and other allies, or just Donald Trump's allies alone, what conspiratorial agreement did they hatch in order to defraud people to obstruct that government proceeding?"
"For example, the fake elector scheme to try to stop the certification of the vote, the effort at the Department of Justice by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Clark to try to get the Department of Justice to say the election was rigged in certain states so that certain swing states' votes would be in chaos or in question and therefore a justification for not certifying the election on January 6th," she elaborated.
"Let me back up a second and say the Department of Justice has a lot of potential crimes they could charge when you think about all of the ways that people used fraud, used misleading, inaccurate information together to block that peaceful transfer of power and there could be all manner of things charged, but seditious conspiracy is the most serious to obstruct a government proceeding," she continued.
"It's what [Oath Keeper founder] Stewart Rhodes has been charged with," she clarified. "That effort was violent. The part that involves Donald Trump and his allies doesn't appear to have violence at its base and so what's critical in that investigation is figuring out the intent," she continued. "What was the intent of a group of people who were pushing, essentially, a lie to stop vice president Pence and Congress from affirming that Joe Biden was the next president."
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