Donald Trump Should 'Plead Insanity' If Indicted: Harvard Law Professor

Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe said Sunday that former President Donald Trump should "plead insanity" if he was indicted for the events surrounding last year's Capitol riot.

"If this is the 'defense' at Trump's forthcoming trial, I don't envy the lawyers who agree to represent him. They'd better be psychiatrists expert at reflexive projection and capable of getting their client to plead insanity," Tribe wrote on Twitter.

The law professor was commenting on Trump's reaction to the report that was released Thursday by the House select committee investigating the riot. The attack on the Capitol started after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, to try to overturn the certification of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory.

The committee determined in its report that "the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him."

Trump condemned the 845-page report and described it as a "highly partisan" aspect of a political "witch hunt." He also touted his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election, which he said was the cause of "the protest."

The former president also heavily criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and said that she had ignored his "recommendation for troops to be used" in Washington, D.C.

"The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C., show the 'Peacefully and Patrioticly' [sic] words I used, or study the reason for the protest, Election Fraud," Trump said in a post to Truth Social. "WITCH HUNT!"

Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed that troops were requested to protect the Capitol building that day, but there were no records revealing that the former president made such a request, according to PolitiFact.

Some former Trump officials testified before the select committee that they never heard Trump make a request for troops before or during the insurrection. Additionally, no evidence revealed that Pelosi turned down the supposed request.

Meanwhile, the House committee on Monday recommended referring Trump to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for at least four criminal charges related to the riot, which include inciting an insurrection.

Last week, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said that being prosecuted for insurrection is "important" because it would ban Trump from holding office again.

Trump might also be charged in a separate DOJ investigation looking into the way he mishandled highly classified documents, which the FBI recovered in August from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The former president has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said that he declassified those documents before removing them from the White House after he left office.

In a Truth Social post last week, the former president slammed the FBI and DOJ over the ongoing criminal investigations against him.

"Our Country is SICK inside, very much like a person dying of Cancer. The Crooked FBI, the so-called Department of "Justice," and "Intelligence," all parts of the Democrat Party and System, is the Cancer. These Weaponized Thugs and Tyrants must be dealt with, or our once great and beautiful Country will die!!!" he wrote.

Trump said in another post last week: "THEY ARE GOING AFTER ME BECAUSE THEY ARE REALLY GOING AFTER YOU!"

Newsweek reached out to Trump's media office for comment.