Former President Donald Trump and his high-level cohorts have yet to be held accountable for the attempted coup of the United States government on Jan. 6, 2020 - and former U.S. Acting Solicitor General Neal K. Katyal is issuing a dire warning for investigators.
"To fail to investigate government officials, including the former president, who had to know that the attempt was to interfere with the counting of the vote, to say nothing of its potential for accompanying violence, is fantastically dangerous," Katyal wrote for The Atlantic.
"The whole point of criminal law is to provide societal condemnation of evil acts and to deter them in the future," Katyal continued. "If government leaders and their private army of advisers can get away with encouraging a mob to, in 2021, stop one of our nation’s most solemn functions, the counting of electoral votes, what is to stop them from trying again in any other year?"
Katyal explained that "the essence of the rule of law is to treat like parties equally. That’s why Lady Justice appears blindfolded, because she is to dole out justice impartially. I teach my criminal-law students that this is a 'same yardstick' principle—what law is, at bottom, is a command to judge people according to the same yardstick, whether you like them or not. And that means that if there is serious evidence of crime, you don’t look the other way, no matter how hard prosecution may be. At the same time, that principle doesn’t mean Garland ought to be announcing criminal charges against Trump and his pals right now. Merrick Garland is the attorney general, not Santa Claus."
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Katyal presented that the yardstick is already pointing in a "clear direction."
"...given the public record already available—including evidence of 'war rooms' at the Willard Hotel, bogus legal memos that circulated among senior government leaders, and even a member of Congress who is known to have worn body armor that day—it’s very hard to see how an investigation into all of this wouldn’t be required. To fail to investigate government officials, including the former president, who had to know that the attempt was to interfere with the counting of the vote, to say nothing of its potential for accompanying violence, is fantastically dangerous," he wrote.
Katyal offered, "Nothing less is at stake than protecting the architecture of the U.S. government. Right now, members of Congress who look complicit in the Jan. 6 attack are refusing to cooperate with the congressional investigation, emboldened by their belief that there is no serious risk of Justice Department prosecution. A DOJ investigation would change that. It speaks to Attorney General Garland’s character that he has handled the investigation with so much tact. But we are at a national crossroads. If Garland doesn’t speak out about the investigation’s scope, the other guys will."
