If US Justice Dept. prosecutor Jack Smith has his way, several insurrection witnesses may soon turn on Donald Trump.
Politics :
Multiple concurrent cases against Donald Trump could ruin his plans to return to The White House and pardon himself from all legal challenges. Colorado and Maine each announced plans to remove Trump’s name from the 2024 presidential election ballot due to his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill attack. Additionally, Jack Smith is staging a case against Trump in the District of Columbia for his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Now, ABC News is reporting that Smith has recently uncovered a new set of details from insurrection witnesses that prove Trump not only refused to stop the violent attack on the US Capitol, but opted to watch the violence unfold on national TV as validation of his self-perceived victory.
The new information has reportedly come from interviews with Dan Scavino, Trump’s former deputy chief of staff and current senior adviser to his re-election campaign. Scavino originally refused to cooperate with the House select committee’s probe on Jan. 6, citing executive privilege. However, he has since been forced to comply and cooperate with a grand jury subpoena.
Additionally, several unnamed White House advisers and top lawyers affiliated with Trump have also provided new information as insurrection witnesses that are expected to be damaging to ‘The Donald.’
According to ABC News, Scavino informed Smith’s investigators that as the violence intensified on Jan. 6, Trump showed little interest in taking any action whatsoever to halt it.
“Trump was ‘very angry’ that day – not angry at what his supporters were doing to a pillar of American democracy, but steaming that the election was allegedly stolen from him and his supporters, who were ‘angry on his behalf,’” ABC News reported. “Scavino described it all as ‘very unsettling,’” sources told the outlet.
As the violence unfolded, Trump “sat silently at the head of the table, arms folded, and gaze fixed on the TV,” Scavino said, according to sources.
Scavino added that he recalled telling Trump in a phone call the night of Jan. 6: “This is all your legacy here, and there’s smoke coming out of the Capitol.”
Still, Trump was unmoved.
Former Trump aide Nick Luna shared that when Trump was told about Vice President Mike Pence’s need to be moved to a secure location, he responded by saying “So what?” Luna perceived this as an “unexpected willingness” on Trump’s part to expose a longtime loyalist to potential harm.
Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done,” Trump tweeted in a message that shocked his closest aides
The ABC News report describes Trump as “shockingly derelict” in immediately intervening to stop the “most serious invasion” of the Capitol by domestic terrorists in the nation’s history, Bennett Gershman, a former New York prosecutor and law professor at Pace University said.
“Indeed, Trump’s angry response to Scavino’s comment to him that there’s smoke coming out of the Capitol in effect was, ‘Let it Burn,’” Gershman said. “And his nonchalant indifference to Vice President Pence’s safety and welfare offers chilling proof that Trump’s conscious purpose, namely, his intent, was first to incite an insurrection and then by his inaction to demonstrate his intent that the insurrection effectively stop Congress from doing its constitutional duty to certify the election results.”
Temidayo Aganga-Williams, a partner at Selendy Gay Elsberg and former senior investigative counsel for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack, agreed that Trump’s refusal to intervene could be used by Smith to show his criminal intent on the day of the attack because Trump agreed with the violence and hoped that it would succeed in preventing the transfer of power.
“Trump’s decision not to act undercuts any argument that he was acting in good faith –- even if he legitimately believed he won the election (which he did not), his decision to let violence go unimpeded helps show that he endorsed criminal obstruction of the Congressional proceeding and that the rioters’ actions were consistent with Trump’s goals,” he continued.
With more details being made public, it’s only a matter of time before more insurrection witnesses come forward to testify against Trump in order to save themselves.
“It seems that as Smith’s prosecution team keeps building its case with dramatic new proof, the case appears to be gaining momentum and appears to be so overwhelming that reluctant or scared witnesses might decide to cooperate and avoid getting themselves entangled in the case as defendants,” Aganga-Williams added.
OK WASSUP! discusses Politics:
Insurrection witnesses talk to Jack Smith about Trump.
USA Today:
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in an interview on Sunday with ABC’s “This Week” highlighted that the reporting is about Republican aides, not Democrats who disagree with the former president.
“What’s interesting about it all is then in every case, every piece of this, whether it was our case, in terms of the Electoral College, whether it was what happened with the January 6 committee – select committee or this testimony now, it’s all coming from Republicans,” Pelosi said, referencing the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack.