In an interview on the Daily Beast’s “The New Abnormal” podcast, former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade explained that there is more than enough evidence for the Department of Justice to indict Donald Trump immediately if they so choose to do so.
Following up on a legal analysis she published last week making the case to charge the former president, McQuade explained to co-hosts Any Levy and Molly Jong-Fast that there is substantial evidence that the former president was involved in a conspiracy to defraud the United States and that he made an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding when he harangued former vice president Mike Pence to block the certification of now-President Joe Biden.
In her “prosecution memo” she made the case that Trump attempted “to pressure Mike Pence to abuse his authority as vice president in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021”
Speaking on the podcast, she broke it down by asserting, “What he did is actually pretty clear: public and private statements about pressuring Mike Pence.”
According to McQuade, there is a case to be made just on what is available in the public domain that proves that Trump knew he was attempting to commit fraud when he sought to overturn the election results and then sat back and did nothing as his supporters stormed the Capitol and sent lawmakers fleeing after Pence refused his demands.
“I took a very narrow focus and there may be additional crimes solely related to his pressure on Mike Pence,” she explained. “I conclude that there were two committed, one is conspiracy to defraud the United States by obstructing the certification by the vice president, the other is obstruction of an official proceeding; that proceeding is where they were certifying the election.”
Explaining that she gathered “all the information that is out there” the former prosecutor added that prosecutors can use the very same charge special counsel Robert Mueller used when he indicted theInternet Research Agency in 2018.
“It’s not a far-fetched legal theory,” she explained. “The idea is that, if you use fraud to obstruct some lawful operation of government, it is a crime.”
She went on to add that prosecutors don’t need to catch Trump in a lie, but only need to prove he engaged in “willful blindness” about it.
The attorney elaborated by stating that would mean a person was “aware of a very high probability that the fact was true, but they simply turned a blind eye to the thing they did not want to acknowledge.”
“I think you can’t help but conclude that Donald Trump knew that there was no fraud here,” she added.
You can listen below: