Fear of Trump 2024 Run is Driving Jan. 6 Committee’s Potential Indictment of Former President: Defense Attorney

(L–R) Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Chair of the Jan. 6 committee Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), and Vice Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) listen during a hearing by Jan. 6 committee in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington on June 13, 2022. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

A criminal defense attorney who is defending five people charged with crimes related to the events of Jan. 6 told the Epoch Times that no matter what the House Jan. 6 Committee does in relation to a potential criminal referral for former President Donald Trump, it won’t stop Trump from running for reelection.

“The Jan. 6th Committee will not stop President Trump from running again, no matter what it does,” predicted attorney Joseph McBride of the McBride Law Firm in New York City.

“No matter how hard it tries, it will never, ever succeed, because there is no nexus between President Trump and the violence that occurred at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” McBride added.

Protesters are seen at rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File

‘GITMO’ for Jan. 6 Prisoners

McBride had previously charged that the Jan. 6 defendants were being mistreated while in jail, calling the prison where defendants are detained “DC-GITMO,” in reference to the notorious facility the United States keeps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where foreign terrorists—known as enemy combatants—are kept, without rights afforded to American citizens.

In October of last year, a federal judge agreed with McBride, after a prisoner represented by the attorney was left waiting for over four months to have surgery to repair a broken wrist he sustained while being arrested.

“It’s more than just inept and bureaucratic shuffling of papers,” said U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth at the hearing where he noted bad faith amongst prison officials saying that he had to threaten them with contempt charges before the prisoner received basic medical care after the judge had ordered it, local media reported. Judge Lamberth found two senior D.C. Department of Corrections officials in civil contempt over the months-long delay in medical treatment.

McBride said that the bad faith extends beyond just the prison system for the Jan. 6 defendants and for former President Trump, telling The Epoch Times that the Jan. 6 Committee hearings are the “product of a leftist conspiracy.”

Committee

“This is demonstrated by the fact that the Committee gives the illusion of being bipartisan, but in all reality is nothing more than a cohort of despicable swamp creatures that detest President Trump,” said McBride.

While technically bipartisan, the Committee has just two Republican members, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), both of whom have been highly critical of Trump even prior to the events of Jan. 6.

“The Committee is a joke—a house of cards built on a foundation of lies that will implode under the weight of its own hypocrisy,” McBride said.

Both Cheney and Kinzinger were critical of Trump’s efforts to scale back U.S. troop commitments while president, especially when he failed to keep troops in Syria to defend the Kurds, according to CNN and The New Yorker.

Cheney called the scaled-back defense posture that kept U.S. troops at home “sickening,” while Kinzinger said Trump’s decision on Syria was “shortsighted” and “wrong”.

Cheney’s father, Dick Cheney, was vice president when the United States launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But McBride, who also represents clients who have appeared before the Committee and plaintiffs who are suing over alleged police misconduct on Jan. 6, cautioned that Trump loyalists who think that a declaration by Trump that he is running for the Republican nomination for president might protect the former president from an indictment, would be mistaken.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump gives remarks during a Save America Rally at the Adams County Fairgrounds in Mendon, Illinois, on June 25, 2022. Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images

Trump’s Election Strategy

Trump will announce his intention to run—or not—“at the best possible time, because that is exactly what winners do,” McBride said, while noting that Trump’s candidacy will not confer any additional legal protection “more than he [has] now.”

Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz agreed with that assessment.

“Legally it would have no effect” if Trump declared his candidacy, Dershowitz told The Epoch Times, while saying he didn’t know if it would be a good strategy politically to declare for the nomination earlier rather than later.

Members of the Jan. 6 Committee have already said that they think they have enough legal evidence to support an indictment against Trump for inciting the riot on Jan. 6.

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) listens during the third hearing by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington on June 16, 2022. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Rep. Adam Schiff

“Once the evidence is accumulated by the Justice Department, it needs to make a decision about whether it can prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt the president’s guilt or anyone else’s,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said as the hearings got underway, the Associated Press reported. “But they need to be investigated if there’s credible evidence, which I think there is.”

But critics have pointed out that Schiff has previously made similar claims, using similar vague charges.

First, Schiff made such claims in 2019 as the House investigated unfounded allegations that Trump “colluded” with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election from Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.

Schiff predicted in 2019 that the Department of Justice had enough evidence to indict Trump on the Russian election meddling charges even though the subsequent report on the investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller didn’t recommend an indictment.

Later, Schiff made similar comments during the Trump impeachment trial in 2020 regarding allegations that Trump attempted to blackmail Ukraine into investigating then-candidate for president Joe Biden, charges of which Trump was ultimately acquitted.

But despite the legalities surrounding the decisions by the Jan. 6 Committee to indict Trump or not, it’s politics—not law—that is driving Trump’s opponents in Congress, said McBride.

Quite simply, McBride thinks that Jan. 6 Committee members are terrified of a Trump candidacy.

“The announcement of his candidacy will strike the heart into the fear of America’s enemies, both foreign and domestic,” McBride concluded, leaving little doubt on which side the defense lawyer stands.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the House Jan. 6 Committee and Rep. Schiff’s office for comment.