The January 6th committee is now well underway and has already displayed bombshell evidence. One of the most recent stories related to the insurrection is about conservative lawyer John Eastman, who started working with Trump in December of 2022. According to Greg Jacob, Mike Pence’s lawyer who testified earlier in the hearings, Eastman proposed multiple crazy theories that involved Pence overturning the election. Jacob says that Eastman knew it was illegal and would likely get struck down 9 to nothing by the Supreme Court, but still wanted Pence to go forward. Pence, of course, never did. And while this is a (really) bad sign for Eastman, what does this mean for the person who the committee is really looking into – Donald Trump.
Now one big thing the January 6th committee is looking into is if Trump intentionally incited a mob to attack the capital and peddled false lies about the election. This would help the justice department determine if Trump will be prosecuted. In a CNN interview, a former Trump aide by the name of Alyssa Farah Griffin said that while Trump was watching the election results on TV, he yelled “Do you believe I lost to this guy!” This is this seeming confession of losing enough to get him prosecuted by the Justice Department? Well, it’s complicated. But first, let’s look at the (not very high) chance that he does get prosecuted, and indicted by the Justice Department for inciting an insurrection.
Well first of all, Trump going behind bars will cause an outcry from far right Trump supporters, and might even cause violence from people like the ones who raided the Capitol building. Another thing is that Trump might have had contingencies for these types of situations. For example, he could have pardoned himself before he left office (the water is muddy in terms of if that’s legal or not.)
In the end, I don’t think this committee’s purpose is to put anyone behind bars (though that might happen in the process.) I think that the real attempt is to give America a clearer picture of what went down. Will this harm Trump’s reputation, and (somewhat) shrink his base? Yes. But in the end, by November, this will become nothing more than another election topic that Democrats will keep talking about, and Republicans will keep distracting from.