MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough laid out a closing argument to nail Donald Trump on a seditious conspiracy charge, if he’s ever prosecuted for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Oath Keepers co-founder Stewart Rhodes and 10 others were hit with that charge for their role in organizing the assault on the U.S. Capitol, and the “Morning Joe” host and guest George Conway agreed that Trump’s actions also meet the standards of that charge.
“The criminal law aspect of it goes back to the question of Trump’s intent,” Conway said. “He sat there in his private dining room or whatever by the Oval Office watching television, watching this for hours while people were pleading with him, including his daughter, including his chief of staff, and probably people calling him on the phone to say something, do something, stop it. We hear that he was watching it with glee. He wanted this to happen. He wanted anything to happen that would stop, delay, hinder — use the words of the statute — the execution of the laws of the United States that would transfer power from him to Joe Biden. That’s some of the the most telling pieces of evidence that we have.”
Scarborough said that would make a compelling closing argument if prosecutors ever get around to charging the twice-impeached one-term president.
“You can almost hear it in a closing arguments against the president, not that there would ever be a closing argument against the president because he seems to get away with everything,” Scarborough said. “But you could almost hear a closing argument of the president being a part of this sedition sitting there watching gleefully and wanting the riot to go on, and then the prosecution tells the jury [that] then they finally dragged him out hours later to give a recorded message to stop the rioters and stop the seditionists, and the first take he wouldn’t say say it. They made him do it again. He makes the second take to the rioters, still wouldn’t tell them to stop.”
“It takes them three times after an afternoon of bloodshed, after an afternoon of police being savaged by rioters, by seditionists trying to actually commit insurrection against the United States for the president of the United States to finally compliment them, but then say go home,” Scarborough added.
Conway said that damning evidence exists, and congressional investigators may already have their hands on it.
“It takes three takes, but only that, they didn’t trust him to do it live,” Conway said. “They didn’t trust him to do it live because they afraid of what he would say, so they threw out two takes and he got it semi-right on the third take. Wait until we actually see those two takes because no doubt those were preserved documents that were probably produced to the committee by the National Archives. It’s going to be something. When those videos come out, I bet you it’s going to be something.”