Members of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot said Sunday they have uncovered enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against former president Donald Trump for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The committee announced that Trump's campaign manager, Bill Stepien, is among the witnesses scheduled to testify at a hearing Monday that focuses on Trump's effort to spread his lies about a stolen election. "I would like to see the Justice Department investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump," said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif, a committee member who also leads the House Intelligence Committee. There are certain actions, parts of these different lines of effort to overturn the election that I don't see evidence the Justice Department is investigating.
The committee held its first public hearing last week, with members laying out their case against Trump to show how the defeated president relentlessly pushed his false claims of a rigged election despite multiple advisers telling him otherwise and how he intensified an extraordinary scheme to overturn Joe Biden's victory.Â
The House panel investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol laid the blame firmly on Donald Trump on Thursday night, saying the assault was hardly spontaneous but an attempted coup and a direct result of the defeated president's effort to overturn the 2020 election.
With a never-before-seen 12-minute video of groups leading the siege and startling testimony from Trump's most inner circle, the 1/6 committee provided detail in contending that Trump's repeated lies about election fraud and his public effort to stop Joe Biden's victory led to the attack and imperiled American democracy
Democracy remains in danger, said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the panel, during the hearing, timed for prime time to reach as many Americans as possible.
"January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after January 6, to overthrow the government, Thompson said. "The violence was no accident."
-Inputs from PTI
