Former President Donald J. Trump’s legal team is reportedly mulling a move that could put Republican lawmakers on the stand in his trial on charges related to the so-called “insurrection” on January 6, 2021, that is set to take place in a D.C. courtroom next year.
The bold move, which could see GOP members of Congress including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) subpoenaed and then questioned under oath over their objections to the 2020 election certification, would show that the former president the only one who had questions about the legitimacy of the results.
“It would be a bid to persuade potential jurors that Trump was not an outlier when pushing election fraud, because he represented a widespread view within his party,” according to the Daily Mail which reported on the high-stakes idea.
“They were essential to the recognition of objections, because you had to have a representative from the Senate and from the House,” for a floor debate, said “a source familiar with Trump’s legal team’s thinking” according to the outlet. “So the senators’ objections were obviously important, very important.”
“The move – which would have to be approved by a federal judge and could face objections from prosecutors – could allow the former president to cover his own post-election conduct by having his lawyer question the likes of Hawley and Cruz,” the Daily Mail reported. “The effort wouldn’t involve probing lawmakers about why they voted the way they did – a posture that could touch on separation of powers issues and the Constitution’s ‘Speech or Debate’ clause.”
However, the move could examine “what objections that you see right up until and including J6 [January 6] and to the extent that elected officials have legitimate objections, it’s hard to criticize the president for having the same objections or similar ones,” the source told the outlet.
“So that would really be the theory and it would go to the bona fides of having objections right through the J6 period,” the source said.
“My sense is that many of those elected officials … would welcome the opportunity to testify on these important issues and confirm the reasons why they had objected to aspects of the election,” added the unnamed source.
Testimony from GOP lawmakers could be a wrench in the gears of ruthless Special Counsel Jack Smith who is out to nail Trump by any means necessary and has called the J6 protests that got out of hand, an “unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy” that was “fueled by lies” to obstruct the certifying of the Electoral Vote count.
The source said that the burden lies with the government “to show that the president acted corruptly, which is to some extent not a clearly defined term, but would suggest that he was he was acting for simply an obstructive purpose unrelated to any proper government function. And if we have elected representatives say, “Hey, I was just doing my job. I raised these objections” … it’s kind of hard to say that President Trump was acting with a corrupt intent.”
The trial date has been set for March 4, 2024, by Obama-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan who is presiding over Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against the Republican frontrunner, the day before Super Tuesday and the proceedings will keep the GOP frontrunner tied up in court and off the campaign trail at the most critical period of the battle for the party’s nomination.
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