Washington D.C. (WBEN) - In a historic final hearing of the January 6th committee on Monday, the House committee voted unanimously to send Justice Department prosecutors a recommendation to charge former president Donald Trump with four crimes.
The crimes accused consist of obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and "incite," "assist" or "aid and comfort an insurrection." This marks the first time in history where Congress has made a referral of this caliber, accusing a former president.
The ball is now in the court of the Justice Department, "Democrats say, yes, Republicans say no, or Republicans abstain, but remember, it has no force of law. They're just asking the Justice Department to do this. In the end, it's up to the Justice Department to make that decision. Now, having said that, the Justice Department is now under a democratic regime and there may be some thoughts out there that Trump could influence the next presidential election, so I would be surprised if Trump is not charged as a result of this."
Cambria says that there are potential political motives to charging the former president, "This is a democratic Justice Department, if you will, it's under a Democratic president and we've seen nothing but partisan politics, ever since Trump was in office. So I don't expect anything to change. I think that there'll be people who think that it's politically expeditious, to charge him that that will help the Democrats be re-elected. I mean, this just the times we live in, politics plays such a huge role in what happens."
In the hearing, the House committee laid out numerous pieces of evidence which included phone calls and interviews which the committee they believe is sufficient for charging the former president. However Cambria says that charging someone and proving their guilt have varying levels of difficulty.
"The charging process is easy. It's done by a grand jury and you can remember the famous quote out of New York's Court of Appeals that, "A prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich." It's it's not hard to get an indictment. It's much different to prove the charges. But when you're dealing with politics, you know, the charge may accomplish political motive or goal," Cambria says.
