The Jan. 6 committee investigating the Capitol insurrection has already issued subpoenas to Trump allies and “Stop the Steal” organizers, and more subpoenas are expected to be issued soon. The House Select Committee sent out a flurry of requests last to federal agencies for records last month, including communications from former President Donald Trump’s adult children and others. The Trump administration is a thing of the past, so Rep. Jamie Raskin (R-MD) made it clear on MSNBC that they aren’t playing around and will compel subpoenaed Trump allies to appear before the committee.
“I want to start by understanding this concept of criminal referrals because most of us will never be subpoenaed to Congress, so we won’t really know what are you supposed to do, and what does the threat of criminal referrals mean?” MSNBC host Ali Velshi said.
“Those are two different things,” Raskin said. “The criminal referral is if our select committee on January 6th comes in possession of evidence related by criminal conduct by people that the Department of Justice is currently unaware of, we will refer it to them. In other words, if we have crimes that took place that the DOJ didn’t know about we will send it to them for subpoenas, we have all of the same authority that a court would have to issue subpoenas.”
“So, if you get one of these subpoenas, that is not an optional thing.” he continued. “That is legally mandatory and we can coerce your cooperation through criminal contempt or civil contempt or what’s called the powers of Congress where we can call people before Congress and fine them, and use our own sanctions and that hasn’t been done for a long time, but I don’t think anybody should be testing our patience at this point.”
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“I want to get greater clarity on the criminal referral that I asked you, you said we’re going to subpoena them, they’re going to follow the law,” Velshi said. “That’s it. If any of them think they can slither away from this, they should be worried about the information we’ve already got. when he said we’ll offer criminal referrals is that for not showing up or not giving the information that you requested or is that the fact that they may be underlying criminal activity.”
“It could be both,” Raskin explained. “When we come to people that have committed crimes on January 6th, we will turn that over, but at the same time, the chairman has signaled our determination to get all of the information we’re asking for. It’s just not discretionary or optional. It’s the government’s subpoenas or documents from you: you have to testify unless you will assert a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and we don’t think that that exists.”
“In other words, we will immunize you from the use of any information you give us, but you do still have to testify,” he added. “The point is we’re not going to play these games like they did during the Trump Administration.”
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Similarly, Committee Chair Bennie Thompson said on Friday that “for those who don’t agree to come in voluntarily, we’ll do criminal referrals and let that process work out.”
Featured image via screen capture
