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(Corrects paragraph 15 to attribute testimony about Trump throwing a plate to Cassidy Hutchinson, not Kayleigh McEnaney; corrects name of judge in paragraph two to David Carter, not Andrew Carter)

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol has sought to build a case that then-President Donald Trump behaved illegally when he sought to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat, but what charges might prosecutors bring against Trump and how might he defend himself?

Here are some ideas being floated now:

OBSTRUCTING AN OFFICIAL PROCEEDING

In a March 2 court filing, the committee detailed Trump's efforts to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to either reject slates of electors for Joe Biden, who won the election, or delay a congressional count of those votes..

The president's efforts likely violated a federal law making it illegal to "corruptly" obstruct any official proceeding, or attempt to do so, said David Carter, the California federal judge overseeing the case.

Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, said Trump dismissed concerns that some supporters gathered for his fiery speech outside the White House that day carried AR-15-style rifles, instead asking security to stop screening attendees with magnetometers so the crowd would look larger.

She testified Trump demanded to be taken to the Capitol to join supporters rioting ahead of Pence's expected certification of the vote and tried to grab the steering wheel when his security detail insisted on returning him to the White House.

Hutchinson said the conversation was relayed to her by Tony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official who was Trump's deputy chief of staff for operations.

Ilya Somin, professor of law at George Mason University, said the testimony could "bolster the chances of indicting and convicting Trump, especially insofar as some potential charges hinge on his motives and state of mind."

Story continues

Trump denied Hutchinson's account in a statement posted on Truth Social, his social media app, and called her story about him grabbing the steering wheel "fake" and "fraudulent." Trump has accused the committee of conducting a "sham investigation."

The New York Times and NBC, citing sources in the Secret Service, said the head of Trump's security detail, Robert Engel, and the limousine driver were prepared to testify under oath that Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.

CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD THE UNITED STATES

In the March 2 filing, the committee said it was likely that Trump and others conspired to defraud the United States, which criminalizes any effort by two or more people to interfere with governmental functions "by deceit, craft or trickery."

In addition to Trump's efforts to pressure Pence, the committee cited his attempts to convince state election officials, the public and members of Congress that the 2020 election was stolen, even though several of his allies told him there was no evidence of fraud.

According to Hutchinson's testimony, Trump's White House press secretary at the time, Trump was so enraged by then-Attorney General Bill Barr's interview with the Associated Press saying there was no evidence of election fraud that Trump threw his lunch at the wall, breaking a porcelain dish and leaving ketchup dripping down the wall.

SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY?

Prosecutors already have charged more than a dozen members of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups who were at the Jan. 6 riot with seditious conspiracy, a rarely used statute that makes it illegal to overthrow the U.S. government by force.

To prove seditious conspiracy, prosecutors would need to show Trump conspired with others to use force, said Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former federal prosecutor.

"While her testimony is consistent with that theory, it does not alone establish it," McQuade said.

OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE

At the end of Hutchinson's testimony, Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican, presented possible evidence of witness tampering and obstruction of justice.

Cheney showed messages to unidentified witnesses advising them that an unidentified person would be watching their testimony closely and expecting loyalty.

If the committee has evidence that the people who sent the messages had a "tacit understanding" with Trump, prosecutors could use it to show there was a conspiracy to tamper with witnesses, said Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University in Boston.

"They were setting the table for witness tampering and likely have other witnesses coming in to nail that down," he said.

The fact that Cheney did not identify the sender of the messages suggests it may be "more of a shot across the bow to get the person to knock it off," McQuade said.

TRUMP'S DEFENSE?

Trump has repeatedly denied doing anything illegal in connection with the Jan. 6 events.

If the Justice Department brings charges, prosecutors' main challenge will be proving that Trump acted with corrupt intent, experts said.

Trump could argue he sincerely believed that he won the election and that his well-documented efforts to pressure Pence and state election officials were not meant to obstruct Congress or defraud the United States, but to protect the election's integrity.

Hutchinson's account could make it more difficult for Trump to assert this defense, Medwed said.

"Prior to (Tuesday's) disclosures, the biggest hurdle to charging Trump related to mental state: to proving that he intended to obstruct an official proceeding or to agree with others to defraud the U.S. or foment rebellion," Medwed said.

"(Tuesday's) testimony offered powerful circumstantial evidence that it was his intent to do those things."

DOES THIS MEAN TRUMP WILL BE CRIMINALLY CHARGED?

No. Neither Carter nor the committee can charge Trump with federal crimes. That decision must be made by the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The department is conducting its own sprawling investigation of the Jan. 6 events, but has not signaled whether it intends to indict Trump, a decision that could have enormous political consequences as Trump weighs another run for the presidency in 2024. The department did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)

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Explainer-What charges might Trump face for trying to overturn 2020 election? - Yahoo News

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, overseeing a very narrow Democratic majority, issued a warning to voters after the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade.

Republicans are "plotting a nationwide abortion ban" and will act if they get the majority in Congress this midterm election, she said -- a sentiment that is a nationwide rallying cry for Democrats.

And while that's possible -- the fall of Roe means abortion is no longer legally protected nationwide, leaving the door open to making it illegal nationwide -- the bigger question is whether its plausible.

Here's what to watch.

First things first: there is a Democrat in the Oval Office.

If Republicans were to win a lot of seats in the House and the Senate in November, giving them enough votes to pass a nationwide ban on abortion, that bill would still have to go to the president's desk to be made law of the land.

"The key backstop to there being a ban is that the president would veto it," said Victoria Nourse, a law professor at Georgetown University who focuses on Congress.

Abortion rights activists protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court on the last day of their term on June 30, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The only way around that, in the short-term, would be for Republicans to secure two-thirds of the Senate chamber, or 67 votes, to override that veto -- an incredibly unlikely scenario.

Still, such legislation could "very well backfire," given that only just 13% of Americans support making abortion illegal outright, according to a long-running Gallup poll, said Michele Goodwin, a constitutional law professor at University of California, Irvine.

But just because legislation is unlikely to pass in the immediate wake of the 2022 midterms, those races will still set the stage for bigger threats to abortion rights down the line.

"Where we are today is more of a marathon than a sprint," Goodwin said.

That's because if Republicans were to win the House or the Senate, they would be that much closer to enacting a ban if a Republican president was then elected in 2024.

And while Republicans could be pushed away from flat-out bans because of their unpopularity, more tailored bans could gain traction.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has thrown his weight behind a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks, which could get more support from moderate Republicans because nearly all abortions happen before then.

A ban like that could set up a "chip-away" of abortion rights, Goodwin said.

"To the extent that there is a chip-away that ultimately is realized, like what we see in Dobbs and with these trigger bans, one should actually be deeply concerned about the chip-away that could take place in Congress and also in the executive leadership of our country," she said.

Of course, the underlying question is whether Republicans would actually push for a nationwide ban, if all the pieces were in place.

So far, the only prospective 2024 candidate to go so far as call for a nationwide ban is former Vice President Mike Pence, who reacted to the Supreme Court decision by urging people not to "relent" until "the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land."

Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks to a crowd of supporters at the University Club of Chicago on June 20, 2022, in Chicago.

Jim Vondruska/Getty Images, FILE

Other possible Republican contenders like former President Donald Trump, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley have hailed the decision as a victory for state's rights, steering clear of mentioning top-down action at the federal level.

"This long divisive issue will be decided by the states and the American people," Trump said at a rally on Saturday in Illinois. "That's the way it should have been many many years ago, and that's the way it is now."

And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who initially said a nationwide ban was "possible," recently said he didn't think it would be possible to get 60 senators, which is how many would have to vote in favor of a ban without ending the filibuster.

Any legislation would end up right back in court

Yet another potential barrier would be the court, which is where any law that touches the Roe vs. Wade decision would end up, whether it's an attempt to codify abortion rights or get rid of them.

And the Supreme Court ruled states should decide the laws around abortion on an individual basis, which could neuter interference at the federal level of either kind.

That's led states like California, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey to enact laws that protect peoples' rights to an abortion and make them safe harbors. It's unclear how those laws might interact with a nationwide ban -- something experts describe as uncharted territory.

But Nourse also said she sees a world where the court is more favorable to a nationwide abortion ban, which would align more with its recent ruling, than an attempt to make abortion legal.

"The bottom line is it will go back to the courts either way," said Nourse.

What about the steps to codify Roe vs. Wade as law?

While the midterms could hand Republicans a victory that set the stage for a future ban on abortion at the national level, they could also hand Democrats the votes they need to protect abortion rights.

"People across the country are mobilizing and women are pretty ticked off, including Republican women, even if they are not being vocal about this," Goodwin said.

If the decision does galvanize Democrats enough to gain seats in the Senate, progressives have urged their party to end the filibuster, which would mean Democrats could get laws passed by a slimmer majority.

This past week, Biden endorsed the idea, handing progressives a win.

But moderates warn that the political maneuver would go both ways.

Ending the filibuster could open the door to Republicans using the same tactic to ban abortion -- a point Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin leans on to defend his opposition to ending the filibuster.

The bottom line: No single election will guarantee a ban or the return of national protection for abortions, but every single one will have an impact.

"This is on the ballot," Nourse said. "And it's going to be on the ballot for a longtime."

See the rest here:
Ending Roe vs. Wade opens the door to a nationwide abortion ban. But how likely is it? - ABC News

WASHINGTON When an alarmed Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, called the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, demanding to know why the president of the United States had suggested he was coming to the Capitol while Congress met to certify his election defeat, the person on the other end of the line had just turned 25 years old.

I said, Ill run the traps on this, Cassidy Hutchinson, now 26, testified this week before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, recalling what she had told Mr. McCarthy, Republican of California. I can assure you, were not coming to the Capitol.

Ms. Hutchinsons two hours of testimony provided a riveting account of President Donald J. Trumps mind-set and actions the day of the mob attack and situated the young aide an assistant by title, but a gatekeeper in practice at the very center of some of the most sensitive conversations and events of that day.

It also pulled back the curtain on a little-acknowledged truth about how Washington works: The capitals power centers may be helmed largely by the geriatric set, but they are fueled by recent college graduates, often with little to no previous job experience beyond an internship. And while many of those young players rank low on the official food chain, their proximity to the pinnacle of power gives them disproportionate influence, and a front-row seat to critical moments that can define the country.

Sometimes, the interns themselves appear to be running the show.

After the House investigative committee accused Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, of attempting to hand-deliver to Vice President Mike Pence a slate of false electoral votes for Mr. Trump, Mr. Johnson, 67, blamed the incident on a young underling. He claimed that an unidentified House intern had instructed his staff to give the list of fake electors to Mr. Pence.

Other former Trump aides who have appeared in video testimony during the Jan. 6 hearings include Nick Luna, now 35, Mr. Trumps former body man; Sarah Matthews, now 27, a former deputy White House press secretary; and Ben Williamson, now 29, like Ms. Hutchinson a former aide to Mark Meadows, the final Trump White House chief of staff.

The committee has also featured some of its own young-looking investigators in videos laying out its work.

The relative youth of critical players wielding sway in the government is not a new phenomenon.

Lawrence Higby, who served as a top aide to H.R. Haldeman, President Richard M. Nixons chief of staff, was 25 years old when he testified as a key witness during the Watergate hearings.

President Lyndon B. Johnsons final chief of staff, James R. Jones, was 28 years old when he was appointed to the top job in the White House.

In an interview, Mr. Jones said he was able to rise so high so quickly by following the advice he had received from his boss, W. Marvin Watson, when he joined the White House staff at the ripe old age of 25.

What I was doing was passing his notes to the president, and he said, Youll be noticed at the right time. Just do your work now and stay out of the presidents view.

Mr. Jones added, You just had to be at the right place at the right time. I played very low key, I tried to give the credit of successes to others, I didnt talk to reporters thats how I think I made it. I probably would have made a number of key decisions differently with more years on me.

For the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault, relying on junior aides like Ms. Hutchinson who held internships with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana and then at the White House before joining Mr. Trumps staff has been a crucial part of its strategy. With many of Mr. Trumps senior advisers refusing to cooperate, investigators moved down the organizational chart and quietly turned to at least half a dozen lower-level former staff members who provided critical information about their bosses activities.

We are definitely taking advantage of the fact that most senior-level people in Washington depend on a lot of young associates and subordinates to get anything done, Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, told Politico last month, claiming that the young people still have their ethics intact.

Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the committee, compared Ms. Hutchinson favorably to the more seasoned officials who have stonewalled the panel.

Her superiors men many years older a number of them are hiding behind executive privilege, anonymity and intimidation, Ms. Cheney said in a speech this week. (Her father, the former vice president Dick Cheney, became deputy chief of staff in President Gerald R. Fords White House at the age of 33.)

John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said it has always been the case that in the White House, there are a lot of people in their late 20s and early 30s coming from campaigns or from Capitol Hill for jobs with considerable responsibilities.

Theyre expected to perform with fealty to the institution and the Constitution, Mr. Podesta said. In this case, it seems like the younger people did a better job than the older people on that front.

They also have longer careers ahead of them, perhaps making them less willing to tie themselves forever to Mr. Trumps efforts to overturn the election.

For ambitious young people, government jobs in Washington have long offered a jet-fueled rise to power that the private sector, however lucrative, cant compete with.

You can get a better job as a 24-year-old in Washington in government than you can in a big company, said Steve Elmendorf, a well-connected Washington lobbyist who early in his career worked as a senior adviser to Representative Richard Gephardt, the Democratic leader. The West Wing is physically so small, the person who is the 24-year-old is sitting right on top of the principals. Young people end up getting a lot of responsibility, because the principals are so busy and so hard to get to.

That makes the assistants into gatekeepers who become players in their own right.

If you cant figure out how to get Ron Klain on the phone, he said, referring to President Bidens chief of staff, figure out the three people who sit outside his office.

Adding to the post-collegiate feel of Capitol Hill and the West Wing is the issue of who can afford to work in government, and for how long.

The average age of a House staffer is 31, according to the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to transparency in government, which noted in a report that the wage gap between the private and public sector may encourage staff to seek greener pastures while depriving Congress of experience and expertise.

A chief of staff on average would earn 40 percent more in the private sector than on Capitol Hill, according to the report, and ex-staffers who become lobbyists can increase their earnings by many multiples.

During her time in the Trump administration, Ms. Hutchinson, whose title was special assistant to the president for legislative affairs, earned $72,700, according to White House records. The most senior officials earned up to $180,000.

Still, she was there in the West Wing to witness the ketchup-dripping aftermath when Mr. Trump is said to have thrown his lunch against the wall in a rage that William P. Barr, the attorney general, had said publicly that there had been no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

It was Ms. Hutchinson to whom the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, turned with a dire warning about what would happen if Mr. Trump followed through with his plan to follow his supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6. Were going to get charged with every crime imaginable, Ms. Hutchinson said Mr. Cipollone told her.

And Mr. Meadows, who was said to have brought Ms. Hutchinson to virtually every meeting he attended, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trumps personal lawyer, addressed her familiarly as Cass as they spoke freely to her about what they were anticipating on Jan. 6.

As she leaned against the doorway to his office a few days before, she testified, Mr. Meadows confided to Ms. Hutchinson, Things might get real, real bad on Jan. 6.

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The 20-Somethings Who Help the 70-Somethings Run Washington - The New York Times

President Ronald Reagan began his first inaugural address in 1981 by reminding us thatthe orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are.In the eyes of many in the world, this every four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.

Obviously, the miracle was severely tested on Jan. 6-7, 2021.Joe Biden was only certified as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, you will recall, after a day and night of chaos and violence at the U.S. Capitol.Rioters erected makeshift gallows and chanted hang Mike Pence as others flooded the halls of Congress in search of the vice president, NPR reported, to thwart the peaceful transfer of power that has been a hallmark of modern American history.

That dark day, as Pence later called it, marked the second time in the 21st century that a vice president, while presiding over the tallying of electoral votes, had to quell efforts to overturn the results of a tumultuous presidential election.

In 2001, Vice President Al Gore oversaw the most humbling of certifications his own unsuccessful bid for the presidency in the closest election in American history.Words like fraud and disenfranchisement could be heard above the din of Republicans calling for regular order.Repeatedly, he was forced to gavel down members of the Congressional Black Caucus and others who tried to block the tallying of Floridas 25 highly contested and crucial electoral votes that made George W. Bush the nations 43rd president.

Despite the rancor in the cavernous House chamber, Gore carried out his constitutional duty with grace and humor.Three weeks earlier, a day after the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote in Bush v. Gore, stopped manual recounts in Florida that effectively delivered the election to Bush, Gore ended his quest for the presidency.In conceding, Gore said he strongly disagreed with the Supreme Court decision, but accepted the finality of this outcome and partisan rancor must now be put aside. This is America, and we put country before party.

Although a bare majority of Americans agreed with the Bush v. Gore decision, a Gallup Poll immediately afterwards found that 8 in 10 voters accepted Bush as the legitimate president.Clearly, how Gore handled himself following the determinative Supreme Court ruling and the electoral count had a significant effect.

How differently might history have played out on Jan. 6, 2021, if Donald Trump had not refused to concede?The Boston Globe suggested an unprecedented alternative, Mike Pence should concede the election. ... Doing so would help restore public trust in the electoral process and close the door on Trumps assault on American democracy.

While Pence did not concede, he resisted the pressure being exerted on him to try to single-handedly overturn the election.In their book Peril, Bob Woodward andRobert Costa write that Pence first reached out to former Vice President Dan Quayle, a fellow Indiana Republican, who told him not to even entertain the idea of blocking Bidens election when Congress certified the final electoral count.

Instead, Pence rewrote the vice presidential script for publicly counting electoral votes.Together with his top aides, he crafted 43 additional words that would clearly address the push by Trump allies for false slates of presidential electors.Even after the storming of the U.S. Capitol, Pence pursued his resolve to not be pressured into overturning the election.

Still for months Trump continued to claim Pence could have overturned the Election, Finally, in early February 2022, the former vice president publicly declared, President Trump is wrong, I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.

Afterwards, The Wall Street Journal praised Pence for refusing to succumb to Mr. Trumps pressure. ...It was Mr. Pences finest hour.In subsequent days, most Americans also sided with Pence according to CBS News/YouGov and Quinnipiac University polls released after his speech in Orlando, Florida.

Irrespective of our party affiliation, we are all Americans.We must never forget what President Reagan said about the importance of our peaceful, orderly constitutional transfer of power.Al Gore and Mike Pence, in certainly one their most painful moments in public office, upheld their constitutional oath even when it is not politically expedient.

If we are not willing to accept election results, how is power to be passed from one leader to another in a law-abiding society in which the will of the voters governs?

Stephen W.Stathisfor nearly four decades was a specialist in American history with the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress.He is the author ofLandmark Debates in Congress from the Declaration of Independence to the War in IraqandLandmark Legislation: Major U.S. Acts and Treaties.

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Opinion: Mike Pence and the long road out of the 2020 election

Members of the Jan. 6 committee said recently they might subpoena former Vice President Mike Pence to testify about the pressure he faced from then-President Donald Trump to overturn President Biden's victory in the 2020 election. Witnesses have testified to the panel that Trump called Pence on the morning of Jan. 6 to urge him one last time to stop the certification of Trump's loss to Biden when Congress met to finalize the Electoral College results. "It started off [in a] calmer tone ... and then it became heated," former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told the committee, according to Axios. Ivanka Trump's then-chief of staff, Julie Radford, said Trump called Pence the "p-word" for resisting.

The committee has received the accounts of several Trump and Pence aides about the call. Now it wants to hear directly from Pence about what Trump asked him to do, and why he refused to reject Biden electors to tip the election to Trump. Trump allies vilify Pence for turning down his boss in his time of need. Critics of Trump's baseless claim that he lost to Biden due to election fraud say Pence never pushed back hard enough against the Big Lie. Still others say he's a hero for braving the backlash from MAGA world and doing the right thing to ensure the peaceful transfer of power to the duly elected president. How will history remember Pence's role in the Jan. 6 saga?

Mike Pence put the nation's interests before his own on Jan. 6, says Isaac Schorr at National Review. He has his eye on the White House, so "his political interests may have been better served by lending more credence to 'stop the steal,'" to please the MAGA base. But Pence drew the line where it had to be drawn, and bravely resisted "Trump's call to try to reject the legitimate Electoral College results." His former chief of staff, Marc Short, and former chief counsel, Greg Jacob, told the Jan. 6 committee that Pence never wavered in carrying out his duties on Jan. 6, not even as Trump "egged on a mob chanting 'hang Mike Pence' by tweeting 'Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.'" Pence, it turns out, did "have the courage to do what should have been done," and he saved the day.

A lot of liberals who used to mock Pence as spineless saw him in a new light on Jan. 6, says Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post. Not only did he stand his ground when Trump called him a "coward and worse," but he stayed at the Capitol that day as rioters shouted "Hang Mike Pence!" to do his job. Granted, he wavered before Jan. 6, and looked into whether there was a legal way to delay certification of the vote. Of course, the vice president has no right to stand in the way when Congress certifies the results of a presidential election, and Pence knew that. What he did took guts, but, remember: "Only in a country where duty has lost its currency and honesty is rare does doing the right thing rise to the level of heroic."

"I'm having a hard time joining the 'Mike Pence the Hero' bandwagon," says Bret Stephens at The New York Times. Why didn't he speak up in November when "Trump started lying" about the fact that Biden beat him? Or when Team Trump hired dodgy lawyers to "peddle insane conspiracy theories about voting machines and preposterous interpretations of the Electoral Count Act?" Pence is no hero. He's "a worm who, for a few hours on Jan. 6, turned into a glowworm."

If Pence felt heroic on Jan. 6, he got over it, says Inae Oh at Mother Jones. This week, he told Fox News Digital Monday that the Jan. 6 committee's public hearings were part of a Democratic political plot to, and I quote, "use that tragic day to distract attention from their failed agenda or to demean the intentions of 74 million Americans who rallied behind our cause." The man is flirting with his former boss' "election lies," there. He also claimed to be concerned about "voting irregularities" in the 2020 election, and insisted that he and Trump had talked out their differences. In another Fox News interview, he said Biden lies more than any president in his lifetime, proving unequivocally that he's still a "mealymouthed Trump stooge."

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Is Mike Pence a hero? - The Week