Michael Schmidt on the Capitol Hill Riot: The DoJ Will Need to Investigate Trump Rhetoric Going Back to 2017

‘Do they want to look at the president’s role not just in this siege but in other things?’

EXCERPT:

SCHMIDT: “The larger question that I've heard that they are wrestling is with how much can they get to the bottom of what else was there. There were folks that arrived at the Capitol in tactical gear. There are things that can be heard on the video footage that came out. They’d show people trying to work together and to send messages to each other about getting into the building and such. So how much of it was planned, and how much went into that and who was behind that? And  there is a thought that that’s where all their time and energy should go. And that if you're sort of, you know, someone who had been at the Ellipse, and wasn't part of you know, some larger plan to get into Capitol, ended up being there, maybe it's less important to do that.  It’s just a series of important decisions that the Justice Department is going to have to make about not only what happened on January 6 but the Trump administration in general. How much do they want to turn back and look at what happened? Do they want to look at the president’s role not just in this siege but in other things, in the range of questions that he created throughout his presidency about whether he broke the law? And you know, you can look at that on whether it was something as recently -- you know, as the January 6 incident, or if things that go back even to the first year, to 2017."

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