Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said special counsel Jack Smith may “absolutely” be considering leveling seditious conspiracy charges against former President Donald Trump.
In an appearance on Inside with Jen Psaki on MSNBC, Raskin argued that Trump should be charged with seditious conspiracy charges, which is a conspiracy to overthrow the government. He pointed to the latest Proud Boys trial and convictions under the charge as setting a good precedent, stipulating that Trump may have been part of the conspiracy.
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“Trump could very much have been part of the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers conspiracy, or he might have been involved in an overlapping concentric ring conspiracy with those conspiracies,” Raskin said. “So we don’t have a system of justice, I hope, as I said at the Jan. 6 hearings, where the foot soldiers and the ringleaders down below go to jail and the ringleaders above get a free pass and get to continue their insurrectionist assault on democratic institutions.”
The Maryland Democrat went on to praise the work of the Department of Justice, pointing to the number of arrests and convictions as proof an insurrection took place.
“So we’ve seen a lot of justice take place here,” Raskin said. “The Department of Justice has been doing an excellent job. More than 1,000 arrests. Hundreds of convictions have taken place. More than a dozen people have been convicted of seditious conspiracy, completely refuting those who said, ‘Well, how could this be an insurrection if nobody was trying to overthrow the government?’ Well, now they have their answer. More than a dozen people have been convicted of that.”
He also pointed to the unsuccessful second impeachment of the president as evidence that Trump had taken part in an insurrection.
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“And Donald Trump, of course, was impeached by a 232-vote margin in the House for inciting insurrection against the union, and 57 of 100 senators agreed that he had incited an insurrection against the union,” Raskin said. “We didn’t reach the magic two-thirds number to convict the president, and yet we have robust concurrent majorities of both houses of Congress declaring that that’s precisely what he did. As a matter of constitutional fact.”
Raskin served as a member of the Jan. 6 committee, repeatedly arguing that Trump had led an insurrection against the United States government and should likewise be charged as such.
