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Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney and MSNBC legal analyst, said Saturday that she thinks Attorney General Merrick Garland can make a case to indict Donald Trump for last year's Capitol riot by looking into the plan that involved the former president pressuring then-Vice President Mike Pence into blocking certification of a Joe Biden victory in 2020.
MSNBC host Ali Velshi asked McQuade during her TV appearance about the easiest way to file charges against Trump, to which the legal analyst responded: "I think you can make the case simply by showing a conspiracy to defraud the United States by the pressure he applied to Mike Pence."
The University of Michigan law professor added: "The lie is the fraud, the pressure on Mike Pence is the criminal act, and that is a serious crime: trying to interfere with the lawful transfer of presidential power. So I think that case is there and I think Merrick Garland will charge it."
McQuade also said that there might be other charges related to Trump's possible connections to the far-right and white nationalist groups, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, but those might be hard to prove. The Oath Keepers say they're defending the Constitution, while the Proud Boys say they're spreading an "anti-political correctness" and an "anti-white guilt" agenda, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"I think everybody's looking for the big charge of tying Donald Trump to the seditious conspiracy. That's a hard one to prove his connections to the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Maybe it's there and it sounds like they're looking there because they have given cooperation agreements to a number of those charged with seditious conspiracy already," she said.
The House select committee on Thursday subpoenaed Trump for documents and testimony related to the Capitol riot, saying that the former president "is required to answer for his actions."
"We have left no doubt—none—that Donald Trump led an effort to upend American democracy that directly resulted in the violence of January 6," the committee's chairman Bennie Thompson said. "He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on January 6. So we want to hear from him."
The former president responded to the subpoena by releasing a lengthy memo on Friday to the panel in which he didn't mention whether he intends to testify under oath about the January 6 events or defy the subpoena. Instead, he continued to push baseless claims of the 2020 presidential election being stolen from him due to widespread voter fraud. He also accused the select committee of being a "charade and witch hunt."
Will Trump Comply With the Committee's Subpoena?
McQuade told Newsweek recently that even if Trump complies with the subpoena, his contribution might be minimal.
"I would be surprised if the committee has the wherewithal to push Trump to appear," McQuade said. "My guess is he will stall, invoke executive privilege or even the Fifth Amendment, and never appear at all. If he invokes the Fifth Amendment, he cannot be compelled to testify unless he receives immunity, and no one is going to give him that."
The select committee on Thursday showed new evidence during its last public hearing before the midterm elections that panel members said made Trump "the central cause" of the insurrection. Meanwhile, Thompson said that the evidence presented by the committee "did not come from Democrats or opponents of Donald Trump," but that it came from Trump's family, former Trump officials, White House aides, and top state and national Republican figures.
In addition to the committee's subpoena, the former president is already facing an ongoing investigation into the way he allegedly mishandled White House classified documents that FBI agents seized from his house in Mar-a-Lago in Florida in August.
The former president denied any wrongdoing and said that he declassified the documents before moving them to his house. However, many legal analysts, including former Justice Department official Mary McCord, have said that he was not authorized to do so after leaving the White House.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's media office for comment.
About the writer
Fatma Khaled is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. politics, world ... Read more