Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, who now teaches at the University of Michigan Law School, said that Attorney General Merrick Garland won't have a choice but to prosecute Donald Trump.
Over the weekend Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said that Trump must testify because there are far too many questions that have been unanswered. At the same time, Trump maintains his innocence and argues that he hasn't had an opportunity to defend himself publicly. Cheney said that if he truly believes that then he should come to the committee to testify.
“The committee treats this matter with great seriousness,” she told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
"We are going to proceed in terms of the questioning of the former president under oath," said Cheney. "It may take multiple days and it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves. We are not going to allow the former president -- he's not going to turn this into a circus. This isn't going to be his first debate against Joe Biden and the circus and food fight that became. This is far too serious a set of issues and we've made clear what his obligations are."
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Cheney also said that she thinks there are multiple criminal offenses to navigate.
"Barbara McQuade, some people minimized the importance of whether or not the committee sends over criminal referral," said MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace. "This isn't about the technical aspect of whether they refer Trump criminally, about whether we take a case to the country, we have produced evidence of his intent, witnesses from Cassidy Hutchinson you hadn't talked to before we put her in a public hearing and if you do not prosecute it — calls into question whether or not we're a nation of laws and rules."
McQuade agreed, saying statements like Liz Cheney's make prosecutors uncomfortable "because prosecutors are not supposed to act based on public pressure from anybody, most certainly not politicians, because they're supposed to decide cases based on facts and law and not political pressure."
That said, McQuade explained "they can't ignore the facts. What the committee has done is present to the nation facts that do seem to demonstrate at least probable cause, if not sufficient guilt to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump is culpable here. I don't know that they've made the case for his link to the violence at the capitol. Lots of good circumstantial evidence, but I think they've made the case of a conspiracy to defraud the United States by knowing that it is a lie that election was stolen and pressuring Mike Pence to throw out the results nonetheless. That, to me, strikes me as a core of a very strong case and I can't imagine the Justice Department can see that evidence and think it is not advance the federal interest to bring that case."
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