Ruskin’s comments came after the commission’s first public hearing on Thursday – the first in a series this month to highlight the commission’s findings, which included interviews with more than 1,000 people about how Trump and His team tried to overturn the results of the 2020 elections on multiple fronts. Ruskin, who is a lawyer, earlier in the interview made a distinction between the power of Congress to accuse people of contempt of Congress – pointing to the committee’s accusations against members of Trump’s circle, including Peter Navarro and Mark Meadows. and Steve Bannon, who did not comply with summonses – in exchange for a referral of crimes by the former president. “There is no specific legislative provision for simply referring crimes to the Department of Justice. I suppose our entire investigation is a referral of crimes to both the Department of Justice and the American people, because it is a massive attack on the American democracy mechanism when you have one in place. “A president who is trying to overthrow the majority in the electorate of his opponent who won him,” he said. Lawmaker Adam Siff, another Democrat on the selection committee, went a step further Sunday, saying he believes the Justice Department should investigate Trump’s possible criminal activity as it relates to Jan. 6. “I would like to see the Department of Justice investigate any credible allegations of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump or anyone else,” he told ABC’s “This Week.” “The rule of law must apply equally to all. And there are certain actions, parts of these different lines of effort to overturn the election, that I do not see evidence being investigated by the Ministry of Justice.” He added: “Once the evidence is gathered from the Ministry of Justice, it must decide whether it can prove to a juror beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of the President or anyone else, but it must be investigated whether there is credible evidence. which I think exists “. Leading Democratic leaders in Washington and across the country fear that Trump may run for president again until Garland decides whether to oust him and others in the run-up to the Jan. 6 uprising, CNN reported. last week. Dozens of top Democrats in Washington and across the country tell CNN that Garland may have lost time trying to prosecute top Trump administration officials before embarking on the 2024 election campaign, which begins later this year. the mid-term appointments. Garland has vowed to keep politics out of justice at the Justice Department, though he says he does not shy away from political affairs. And Justice officials say they still have a long way to go before President Joe Biden’s government decides to prosecute any crimes related to trying to overthrow the election results. Separately, in a committee that revealed last week that many Republican lawmakers had asked for pardon from then-President Donald Trump, including lawmaker Scott Perry, Ruskin called it “shocking.” “There are a lot of members of Congress, as Vice President (Liz Cheney) said at our inaugural hearing, and in due course, the details will come to light,” he said. Perry denied that he had asked Trump for forgiveness. “The idea that I never asked for a presidential pardon for myself or other members of Congress is an outright, shameless and lifeless lie,” he wrote on Twitter. Siff also said the commission plans to present evidence that Republican lawmakers were asking for forgiveness in the wake of the uprising. “We will show the evidence we have that members of Congress were asking for forgiveness,” he said. “For me, I think this is some of the most compelling evidence of guilt. Why wouldn’t members do it if they felt their involvement in this conspiracy to overthrow the election was somehow appropriate? present the data we have “. Ruskin also said that one of the goals of the hearings was to prove to “every reasonable, open-minded person” that Trump knew he had lost the election and wanted to overturn the results anyway.
