Trump could have 'ended the violence' — and faces criminal liability for not doing so: legal expert
On Tuesday's edition of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance made clear that the evidence already released by the January 6 Committee could potentially support insurrection charges against former President Donald Trump himself.
This comes as multiple right-wing paramilitary groups involved in the attack have been hit with seditious conspiracy charges.
"They clearly have nine and a half hours of testimony from the former vice president's chief of staff under subpoenas, his former — I'm sorry, former chief counsel, his former chief of staff also testified and Judge Luttig, a source close to him promises that he will be giving his final opinion in his live testimony Thursday," said anchor Nicolle Wallace.
"This is a real exclamation point in the testimony because here we are talking about a plot that doesn't involve violence, to use new electors," said Vance. "We're debating constitutionality. We're talking about whether the courts might intervene or whether we could have a constitutional crisis. And all of a sudden, we're talking about violence. And that's insurrection, a charge we haven't really talked about."
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Vance proceeded to explain how such a charge could be applied to the former president.
"We've been talking about interference with Congress. But you know, that raises this whole notion of seditious conspiracy, and something that has been lacking or at least that we haven't seen in these hearings is evidence that the former president intended to use violent means or force to overthrow the government," said Vance.
"Suddenly, you have talk of hanging Mike Pence. You thought Trump's comments, and I suspect at the end of these hearings, we'll hear the evidence about Trump staying, you know, in the White House, doing nothing, issuing no orders to end the violence, and that's circumstantial evidence ... it's not Trump himself saying, I'd like to use force to overthrow the government, but it's circumstantial evidence of his intent because if he had wanted to end the violence, he could have, and he didn't. And that could raise the specter of these additional charges being considered at DOJ."
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