Prosecutors have clear legal avenues to hold Donald Trump accountable for inciting the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
CNN's Brianna Keilar interviewed former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig about potential charges one day after Steve Bannon turned himself into authorities to face criminal charges for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena.
"Is there enough to charge Trump or any ally with sedition?" Keilar asked.
"Sedition is a really hard charge to prove because you have to prove intent to commit violence," Rosenzweig replied.
"Trump is a master at hiding the ball. Kind of like Henry II years ago, 'Will nobody rid me of this troublesome priest?' Everybody took that as an order to kill [Archbishop of Canterbury] Thomas Becket, but the king could say, 'I didn't actually mean that.' Trump says, 'Will nobody save my election?' When they get violent and try to save the election, he can say, 'No, I didn't mean to be violent like that, I meant legally.' He has some deniability at this point, unless we get testimony from inside the room from his closest allies, like Steve Bannon, about what the president actually said, what they actually intended that day, in advance in terms of violence, or afterwards once the violence was going on, what they intended by letting it continue, it'll be a tough case to make," he explained.
"So then what is the legal recourse?" Keilar asked.
"Well, in some ways, the best legal recourse is to take the law and fix it so that the president can't do this over again," Rosenzweig replied.
"For me, if I were doing this, I would actually be thinking about something like local assault conspiracy charges," he explained. "The District of Columbia has all of the laws that any other state or territory does against violence, and the president was, at a minimum, I think, an instigator and complicit in that," he said. "I think that there would probably be viable charges in that regard."
Watch:
Trump investigators tipped off on ‘viable charge’ to take the former president off the streets www.youtube.com
