On Wednesday, writing for Newsweek, Roosevelt University political science professor David Faris broke down the problems awaiting former President Donald Trump as the House Select Committee on January 6 is preparing to release its final report.
That report, Faris argued, is going to be a legal and political nightmare for Trump on a level he hasn't faced before.
"A withering, 17-point play-by-play of Trump's alleged crimes appears at the beginning of the committee's 154-page executive summary," wrote Faris. "It details how Trump and his minions conspired to produce fake allegations of election fraud, attempted to unlawfully create alternate slates of electors to submit to Congress, pressured officials at DOJ to make false statements, leaned on state officials to alter their election results, strong-armed members of Congress into objecting to those results, knowingly sent an armed crowd to the Capitol from his rally on Jan. 6, 2021, sent an inflammatory tweet that put former Vice President Mike Pence in mortal danger during the riot and then unconscionably sat on his hands watching the mayhem on television instead of using the powers of his office to stop it."
"I understand and appreciate the trepidation of those who, while they believe Trump committed these crimes, feel that his prosecution could dangerously inflame his supporters, further polarize the country and perhaps lead to sustained violence," wrote Faris. "No one thinks that prosecuting or jailing a former president should be done capriciously, nor should anyone have any illusions that a successful prosecution will somehow break the fever of conspiratorial thinking and paranoia that now grips the GOP base. But these objections are misguided and no longer rooted in any objective reading of the situation."
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Ultimately, he wrote, the four-count criminal referral the House just sent to the Justice Department for Trump is warranted, and serious.
"Now, the DOJ is under no obligation to act on the committee's recommendations. In July 2016, after then-FBI Director James Comey announced that there would be no prosecution of Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state, the GOP heads of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees made criminal referrals to the DOJ about her marathon testimony in October 2015 for a special House panel on the Benghazi incident," concluded Faris. "That referral went nowhere. Trump, on the other hand, is almost certainly about to go through hell."
