A Democrat on the House January 6 committee accused Donald Trump of tampering with witnesses in a Wednesday interview after the former president said he’d pardon people who stormed the Capitol if he was re-elected in 2024.
Rep. Pete Aguilar of California called on Republicans in Congress to make clear where they stand on Trump’s comments, made during a campaign-style rally in Conroe, Texas on Saturday night.
Some top GOP lawmakers, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have already publicly disagreed with pardoning the violent rioters.
On Wednesday CNN host Brianna Keilar asked Aguilar, ‘Is Trump tampering with witnesses when he’s talking about pardons when he’s dangling them in front of 1/6 defendants?’
‘Absolutely,’ Aguilar said. ‘And I think the question is more for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle — You know, where — where are they? Do they support this? when is enough enough?’
Trump told a crowd of supporters last weekend that ‘If I run, and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly.’
‘If that requires pardons, we will give them pardons,’ the former president added. ‘Because they are being treated so unfairly.’
He dug his heels in during a Newsmax interview that aired on Tuesday night: ‘I would absolutely give them a pardon if things don’t work out fairly.’
Rep. Pete Aguliar of California said Trump ‘absolutely’ was tampering with witnesses during an interview with CNN New Day on Wednesday morning
Trump said during his Saturday night rally in Conroe, Texas that his supporters who were arrested for storming the Capitol are ‘being treated so unfairly’
Trump’s comments underscore the committee’s tight timeline, along with the possibility of Republicans stymieing Democrats’ investigation if they take back control of Congress in November 2022.
During the interview Aguilar also claimed Trump ‘said the quiet part out loud’ when the ex-president called on the committee to investigate former Vice President Mike Pence for not overturning the 2020 election results.
‘He wanted to overturn the election, and he clearly wanted to use every tool possible from November to January 6th, in order to do that, whether it was election machines or whether it was using the levers of the Department of Justice or Department of Defense or Homeland Security,’ he said, referencing a recent report that Trump personally involved in efforts to get the military to seize voting machines after the last election.
Aguilar did not say whether the explosive allegations led the committee to investigating Trump for a coup attempt, but added: ‘to say that this is dangerous, or what the former president did was dangerous, is an understatement.’
‘We were at the doorstep to a democratic and constitutional crisis, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that. And the committee’s work will continue to unravel the pieces here and will ultimately tell the truth to the American public, which is what we promised to do,’ he said.
McConnell became the latest Republican lawmaker to distance himself from Trump’s comments on Tuesday by saying those charged with crimes for the January 6 Capitol attack shouldn’t have their sentences shortened.
‘What we saw here on January the 6th was an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the other, which had never happened before in our country,’ McConnell said at a press conference with GOP leaders. ‘My view is I would not be in favor of shortening any of the sentences for any of the people who pleaded guilty to crimes.’
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell countered former President Donald Trump on Tuesday saying those charged with crimes for the January 6 Capitol attack shouldn’t have their sentences shortened
Trump’s comments attracted criticism, including from a top ally: Sen. Lindsey Graham, who called them ‘inappropriate.’
‘I don’t want to reinforce that defiling the Capitol was OK. I don’t want to do anything that would make this more likely in the future,’ Graham said.
‘I want to deter people who did what – on January the 6th, and those who did it, I hope they go to jail and get the book thrown at them because they deserve it,’ the South Carolina senator added.
Press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that Trump’s rally speech and his criticism of former Vice President Mike Pence for not overturning the election is a ‘reminder of how unfit he is for office.’
‘And it’s telling that even some of his closest allies have rejected those remarks as inappropriate in the days since,’ Psaki added during the briefing.
On Sunday, Trump sent out a statement specifically saying that he wanted Pence to ‘overturn the election’ when the vice president was presiding over the joint session of Congress on January 6, the day of the Capitol attack.
‘He defended the actions of his supporters who stormed the Capitol and brutally attacked the law enforcement officers protecting it,’ Psaki pointed out. ‘I think it’s important to shout that out and call that out.’
‘He even attacked his own vice president for not, in his words, having overturned the election,’ the press secretary added.
Trump also encouraged his supporters to protest if the ex-president got indicted.
‘If these radical, vicious racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had,’ Trump said at the Saturday rally. ‘In Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt.’
Earlier this month, New York’s Attorney General Letitia James claimed that Trump’s company used ‘fraudulent or misleading’ valuations of golf clubs, skyscrapers and other properties to secure loan and tax benefits.
Trump has claimed James’ investigation is politically motivated.
On Monday, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia asked the FBI for a risk assessment of the courthouse in downtown Atlanta after Trump called on his supporters to protest at the rally.
The prosecutor, Fani Willis, is planning to impanel a special grand jury in May to look into the former president, The New York Times said.
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