Election 2020

Claire McCaskill Explains How Merrick Garland Can Get a Grand Jury to Indict Trump for Jan. 6

While more information is becoming increasingly available about the January 6 attack waged on the U.S. Capitol, questions about former President Donald Trump’s role as the riot unfolded are also surfacing, Raw Story reports. Chief among those questions: What was Trump doing for hours, even as his political allies begged him to intervene.

That was the topic of discussion between MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace and former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) during an interview Monday. McCaskill, a former state prosecutor, detailed what she would encourage Attorney General Merrick Garland to do so that members of the Grand Jury are persuaded to criminally indict Trump.

She called for prosecutors to walk the jury through what those tumultuous moments looked like while Trump was watching coverage of the riot.

Sources who were inside the White House as the riot unfolded on January 6 say Trump was glued to the TV. The then-president seemed thrilled about what his supporters were doing for him. McCaskill told Wallace that she believed the text messages, emails, phone calls, and panicked requests for help he and his staff were receiving are proof that Trump’s intentions were malicious.

“We can go through and we can put the images at a specific time,” McCaskill said. “And we can then fill in the text messages, the phone calls that were flooding the White House, saying ‘Get him to call them off.’ Now, what was he watching on TV at those moments? He was watching windows being broken. He was watching police officers being stabbed with flag poles. He was watching people  hang from the balcony in the Senate. He was watching people carrying around government property proudly in the Capitol. And, frankly, he was watching a confrontation at the door of the House where someone was killed.

Those who were with Trump at the time said he loved it.

“Give me those facts. Give me those timelines,” McCaskill said. “I’m just telling you, any responsible leader would want to end the violence, not provokei t. That’s what he did that day, and that’s what this committee is going to lay out. And that’s where Merrick Garland is either going to rise to the occasion or go down in infamy as one of the worst attorney generals in this country’s history.”

It’s hard to believe he could be worse than Bill Barr. But some people believe Garland is being reticent in prosecuting Trump, including Trump’s niece, who earlier this month called Garland an “idiot” for not yet prosecuting her uncle, Business Insider reports. Speaking on the Dean Obeidalla Show, she said the Justice Department is setting a dangerous precedent if it fails to indict Trump for inciting his followers to riot in an attempt to challenge the certification of Joe Biden as president.

“The problem is this is the last time it’s going to happen — this is literally our last opportunity,” Mary Trump said. “I thought the Department of Justice was supposed to be about justice but Merrick Garland seems to have deluded himself into believing that by not pursuing this he’s somehow taking the politics out of the Department of Justice.”

But that’s not all she had to say.

“I have something to say to you then, Mr. Garland: You think it’s not a political decision not to pursue, not to investigate the second worst .. .insurrection in U.S. history? I mean, that’s not a political decision?”

“And the fact that he doesn’t understand that or he doesn’t care, or that  he’s an ‘institutionalist’ because that apparently gives you free license to be an idiot, I don’t know.”

Well, Mary Trump can certainly tell it like it is. Let’s hope Garland listens to her and Sen. McCaskill because if he doesn’t, he’s letting a man who’s clearly a monster off the hook.

I’ve provided clips of both interviews below.

meet the author

Megan has lived in California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida and she currently lives in Central America. Living in these places has informed her writing on politics, science, and history. She is currently owned by 15 cats and 3 dogs and regularly owns Trump supporters when she has the opportunity. She can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GaiaLibra and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/politicalsaurus

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