Jan. 6 investigators say Trump trying to 'send a message' with calls for their imprisonment

Members of the special committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol are hitting back at President-elect Trump after he called for their imprisonment, saying the criminal conduct surrounding the rampage was committed by Trump and his supporters, not those who probed the tragedy afterwards. 

The lawmakers on the now-defunct panel, which featured members of both parties, maintain that Trump’s threat to prosecute them puts him in league with tyrants who break laws with impunity and punish anyone who seeks to hold them to account.

For that reason, they’re rejecting Trump’s threat of time behind bars.

“In America, we jail people only for having committed criminal offenses that they are found guilty of by a unanimous jury of their peers. We don’t jail people for doing their jobs and living up to their constitutional oaths of office,” Rep. Jamie Rakin (D-Md.), a member of the select committee, told The Hill in an interview.

With Trump heading back to the White House next month, his critics say the threat is also designed to scare off any future investigations into his conduct over the next four years. 

“This is not just about retribution against those of us on the committee. This is about sending a message that no one better hold him to account in his second term, no one better look at what he does and do their congressional job,” Rep Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), another member of the Jan. 6 panel who also led Trump’s first impeachment, said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.

“He is intent on trying to break down these checks and balances in our system.” 

Trump’s threat, which he amplified Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, has also heightened the push for President Biden to pardon the Jan. 6 investigators preemptively, shielding them from any efforts at prosecution by Trump’s Justice Department.

That possibility is already under discussion within the Biden White House, although some of Trump’s most vocal critics, including Schiff, say the president should resist the urge to issue such pardons out of concern it would set a bad precedent — one that could be abused by future administrations. 

Raskin, for his part, declined to comment on the prospect in the wake of Trump’s latest remarks, after last week appearing to not rule out the prospect.

“I don’t think it’s my place to comment on it,” he told The Hill. “It’s solely within the presidential power.”

Trump levied his call for members of the Jan. 6 select committee to go to jail during a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which was his first interview with a major network following his presidential victory.

The president-elect sought to strike a conciliatory tone, at one point, telling moderator Kristen Welker that he would seek “retribution” — which he threatened to carry out against his foes on the campaign trail — through “success,” a change in timbre for the brash Republican.

“I’m really looking to make our country successful. I’m not looking to go back into the past,” Trump said. “I’m looking to make our country successful. Retribution will be through success.”

Minutes later, however, when asked if he would pardon himself, the president-elect claimed “I didn’t do anything wrong” before blaming lawmakers on the congressional panel for instigating the allegations against him — a complete 180 from his pacifying tone moments earlier.

“Cheney was behind it… And so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee,” Trump said. “Honestly, they should go to jail… for what they did.”

His remarks are renewing the clash over the riot at the Capitol almost four years ago, when a mob of Trump supporters attacked law enforcement officers and stormed into the building in a failed attempt to nullify the 2020 election results and keep Trump in office for another term. More than 140 law enforcement officers were injured, and three others died in the days that followed, including two by suicide. One rioter was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to enter the Speaker’s lobby abutting the House chamber. 

In the aftermath of the attack, congressional leaders of both parties — including then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and then House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — said Trump was responsible for the violence. But McConnell also fought to ensure that the Senate did not convict Trump, after the House impeached him.

And McCarthy quickly changed his tune, making amends with Trump and refusing to have Republicans participate in the House investigation, leaving then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to choose all nine members of the select committee created for that purpose. Two of them — then Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — were Republicans. 

At the end of 2022, the panel released its findings, which found Trump to be the driving force behind the violent attack — allegations that quickly made the members of the committee top targets of Trump and his supporters on and off of Capitol Hill. 

Cheney, for her part, lost her re-election primary to a Trump-backed candidate in August 2022, whom the then-former president endorsed after Cheney cast doubt on his claims of election fraud, voted to impeach him following the Jan. 6 attack, and was selected to serve as the vice chair probing the Capitol riot. Kinzinger, meanwhile, opted against running for re-election amid a tough redistricting map, and as he was the target of ire from Trump and his supporters.

Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who has been nominated to lead the FBI next year, has published a book that includes an enemies list of additional Trump detractors, many of them critical of Trump’s actions on Jan. 6.

In the wake of his latest threat to jail the investigators, some are accusing Trump of a simple attempt to project his own crimes onto others. 

“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power. He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building, and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the Capitol was assaulted, refusing for hours to tell the mob to leave,” Cheney said in a statement. 

“This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history,” she continued. “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

Raskin also did not back down from defending the work he and his colleagues accomplished on their committee.

“It would be nice to live in a time again when people can do their jobs without being threatened with jail time or worse for doing their jobs and living up to their oaths of office,” Raskin said. “We’re proud of the work we did on the Jan. 6 select committee. We are proud of standing up for the Constitution and the rule of law, and we’re still doing it. And we will keep doing it.”

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