'What kind of snowflake' is Trump to not testify after other people fought for him on J6: committee member
On MSNBC Thursday, following the House Select Committee on January 6's motion to subpoena former President Donald Trump, committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Rachel Maddow that former President Donald Trump would be a special sort of coward if, after getting his hardcore believers to fight D.C. police in the street for him, he didn't have the courage to show up and answer questions in a civil hearing.
This comes after MSNBC spoke to the brother of deceased Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who said he doesn't expect Trump will honor the subpoena and give his testimony at all.
"What would you say to Officer [Brian] Sicknick's brother and to other Americans who are wondering what this means in practical terms, this means that Trump will never be sworn in and compelled to talk?" asked Maddow.
"I would say this: what kind of snowflake is Donald Trump that he's willing to send hundreds and hundreds of other people to go and do his battle and to attack police officers with Trump flags and Confederate battle flags and turn American flags into weapons, and he's very happy to do that, and he won't even come and explain himself, why he thought he had a right to do that, or what he thought that was the right thing to do," said Raskin. "What is he afraid of?"
One key possibility of what Trump might be scared of, continued Raskin, is that while a criminal court cannot draw "adverse inference" from someone invoking their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, people can absolutely do so in a civil setting — a precedent set in stone by the late right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
"If Donald Trump wants the entire country to draw the most negative adverse inferences from his not showing up, well, he is free to do that, but at that point, also, the committee can say, if there are any remaining gaps or conflicts or ambiguities in the testimony, we're going to resolve it against him, because as Scalia would say, he has every incentive and motivation to show up, and if he doesn't do so, he is basically confessing," said Raskin. "You can say that in the civil context, whereas you can never say that in the criminal context."
Watch below:
Leave a Comment
Related Post