2020 Election
Time for Jan 6th riot committee to call Trump and Pence to testify: former solicitor general
February 6, 2022 11:59AM ET
Appearing on "The Sunday Show" with host Jonathan Capehart, former Solicitor General Neal Katyal said that last week's revelations about Donald Trump's destruction of documents sought by the Jan 6th committee, along with Mike Pence's rebuke of the former president, is setting the stage for the committee to subpoena them both to testify.
Before noting the report about Trump ripping up official documents and having them burned, and calling it an "easy case" for the Justice Department to prosecute, Katyel called for the two Republicans to be questioned by the House select committee.
After host Capehart brought up calling former attorney general Bill Barr to testify, Katyal then moved on to Trump and Pence.
"I mentioned before, or it has been reported that, you know, Bill Barr has been having some kinds of preliminary conversations with the January 6th select committee," Capehart prompted. "What is the likelihood, the former attorney general, actually testifies before the committee?"
"The committee has got to call it," Katyal replied. "I think ultimately they have to call Pence and Trump too. I just think they're, you know, doing everything else first. Barr has to testify; somewhere in his soul, at some point, you know, he took an oath to uphold the constitutional laws and has to tell what happened. He was -- looks like drummed out or left the White House in December. So he can't speak to probably the events happening in January. "
"But it does look like these congressional investigators have started to uncover this plot which started just two weeks after the election, with a series of memos and then continued through December while Barr was in office and continued in January while you had people maneuvering like Jeffrey Clark to be the attorney general and, you know, seize voting machines," he continued.
"And the revelation this week, Jonathan, is that Donald Trump actually tore up all of these memos, you know, and so that investigators couldn't see all of that," he continued. "And, you know, maybe that's what Steve Bannon meant by the deconstruction of the administrative state or something. I don't know, but it is certainly illegal. The Presidential Records Act forbids that. That's an easy crime for a prosecutor to go after and Merrick Garland's Justice Department."
"The president was warned about this. This is a pretty -- this is an easy case and really hope that the Justice Department is looking into it," he concluded.
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