Capitol riot ‘does not happen’ without Trump, Jack Smith told Congress

https://apnews.com/article/trump-jack-smith-jan-6-congress-537fcb8673e385202c354a3e83897194

34 Comments

  1. >The Jan. 6., 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol “does not happen” without Donald Trump, former special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers earlier this month in characterizing the Republican president as the “most culpable and most responsible person” in the criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

    >The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee released on Wednesday a transcript and video of a closed-door interview Smith gave about two investigations of Trump. The document shows how Smith during the course of a daylong deposition repeatedly defended the basis for pursuing indictments against Trump and vigorously rejected Republican suggestions that his investigations were politically motivated.

    >“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit,” Smith said, bristling at a question about whether his investigations were meant to prevent Trump from reclaiming the presidency in 2024.

  2. I am so stressed out. He can be and should be impeached, but the gesture will essentially only be symbolic for a third time in a row because of how whipped the republicans are.

    What the fuck are we supposed to do? Like really? No safeguards. No accountability. I’m losing my fucking mind.

  3. damnthistrafficjam on

    Convicted criminals should never be allowed to run for president. In this case especially, but really any case at all. You wouldn’t think that needs to be said. Yet, here we are…

  4. And the world watched it as it was happening. Truly amazed at the audacity and stupidity it takes to deny this.

  5. Artistic-Cannibalism on

    Of course it doesn’t happen without him, he sent them there after telling them for months that the election was stolen.

  6. The Republican led house judiciary committee were probably saying “hell yeah, thats our guy” and will handwave all this away.

  7. swiftfoot_hiker on

    Sadly this was all released on a slow news day and secondly screw Merrick Garland for being so damn weak.

  8. The problems are he committed crimes almost daily and yet nothing is done about it. The Republican Party is complicit and will not act for country over party

  9. Wouldn’t this invalidate all of Trump’s J6 pardons? They are clearly part of a vast criminal conspiracy that he led.

  10. It’s kind of ridiculous that WE ALL COULD SEE THAT PLAIN AS DAY ON JANUARY 6th.

    Yet here we are literally years later. This has to be the biggest mishandling of justice in a political landscape in the history of , at the very least, our country.

  11. Altruistic_Koala_122 on

    what baffles me is that a large portion of the People, don’t even realize that jan. 6th was a violent rebellion; which the Constitution outright forbids.

    It’s basically treason on the president’s part, not to mention the blanket pardons to aid the enemy with the whole aiding the enemy with support.

    This is why I lost confidence in the Republicans, too busy trying to be the CPP 2.0 stuffing their pockets with cash and forcing their way of life down peoples throats.

    We’re not in a state of affairs where we want to treat the country’s enemies as a good friend.

  12. I mean, just watch Day of Rage the documentary by the New York Times. The amount of people who don’t know what happened that day is  astounding. But thanks Jack for making it public record in legal terms

  13. All those people committed treason, convicted of it, and then trump pardoned them after regaining office.

    As far as im concerned, you dont need anything more.

    Trump or other people close to him organized it. Even if he didnt outright do it, which is probably true. Trump knew it was going to happen and did nothing about it. AND during it, did nothing to quell it.

    I mean the alternative is trump didnt know about it before or during it. I mean maybe that’s true as well, that Bannon or someone organized it and refused to tell him about it until afterwards, and down played it so that whem trump talks about it, he has no idea… but then that suggests he’s no in charge.

    So which is it. He committed treason or he’s a puppet?

  14. was the committee forced to release the transcript and video? i’m unclear about the republican action on this.

  15. Over on the conservative hub, nothing about this.

    Some cry about it libs stuff unrelated

  16. Available-Throwaway6 on

    Wow, it’s like something we all knew as a “no fucking shit” level gut feeling the whole time.

  17. theDarkDescent on

    No shit. We all watched it happen live. It was undeniable and directly a result of trumps specific rhetoric and comments. So much has been washed away by time and propaganda obfuscation, but anyone who watched that go down knows exactly what happened, and why it happened, and who was responsible. U.N. fucking deniable. Fucking disgraceful that he pardoned those assholes and that they made Babitt a martyr. 

  18. In the same reports it says Trump didn’t call for the riot. Pretty simple at that point…

  19. That was always my top argument. Needlessly focusing on anything beyond that always baffled me tbh. 

    My go-to point was how we saw some of the people who broke in almost think Ted Cruz was against them. They saw a piece of paper that said he was going to vote “nay” and didn’t initially understand what that meant. 

    So clearly they knew nothing of the process. I’ve been saying for literally years now: no one there that day would’ve even known Jan 6 was a thing if not for Trump. Like, I didn’t even know it was a thing before that and I passed my AP gov test. A formality of the process that was practically never talked about. 

    But suddenly it was a huge deal. Why? Perhaps a certain president tweeted about it? Like maybe that’s not a great legal argument but logically, it was always clear as day.