'The smoking gun' is how many people begged Trump to stop the Capitol attack: Nicolle Wallace
Donald Trump was handed a target letter on Sunday informing him that he was likely to be charged with violating several statutes around the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Addressing the issue on Thursday, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace aired clips of the House Select Committee hearings that uncovered enormous evidence around the goings on in the White House on Jan. 6.
Former J6 lead investigator Timothy Heaphy said everything he's seen in the target letter backs up the committee's findings.
"We started with obstruction, and that most closely corresponds to the fact that requires the United States to prove the president and potential co-conspirators specifically intended to impede, interfere with or obstruct an official proceeding," he explained. "So, the questions are, do the president's actions obstruct the official proceeding? He absolutely did. They absolutely did. And, importantly, did he intend for that to happen? The select committee developed evidence of his intent, and Jack Smith focuses on that. So, that, to me, is a felony count. And conspiracy to interfere with the lawful function of government. That is a catch-all. And then the third statute reported in the target letter is the deprivation of civil rights."
Andrew Weissmann, the senior prosecutor on Robert Mueller's team, explained that the clips Wallace played of those witnesses is proof that continues to stack up against Trump to prove his intent.
The testimony before the grand jury from former campaign aide Will Russell on Thursday could have information "directly from Donald Trump," he continued. It was reported earlier that his lawyer was fighting "executive privilege."
"So, it is that kind of evidence that we don't have a full sense of exactly what Jack Smith has," Weissmann also said. "But if he can develop that, and believes that it is beyond a reasonable doubt, remember, very high standard, then seditious conspiracy would be an appropriate charge as has been charged with respect to many other people, as Tim notes."
That's when Wallace cut in to say that, in her mind, all of these things add up to the evidence of intent.
It's "so remarkable that this conversation is even possible," she remarked. "I come back to Liz Cheney's presentation about derelictions of duty. And again, it's a political term, but it feels like what we're seeing in the parallel world of a criminal investigation that there may have been crimes committed. And when you think about these final witnesses, I keep thinking, wouldn't it be great if one person could tell you how many people came in and asked Trump to call off the insurrection? We know Kevin McCarthy wanted him to call it off. And we know Ivanka went in two or three times. We know that Cassidy [Hutchinson] was fielding calls from all manner of people. And we know [Mark] Meadows said, 'Cass, he doesn't want to. He agrees with them.' We played on Tuesday all of the Republican allies. I mean, the cacophony of voices coming to the Oval Office telling him to stop it, while he did nothing. That really does amount to a smoking gun, if you will. That Trump was enthusiastic about the violence itself."
Washington Post reporter Jackie Alemany agreed, saying she's heard from members of the J6 committee that this has become a sort of validation for their work.
See the full discussion in the video below or at the link here.
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