Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said on Friday that former President Donald Trump‘s response to his subpoena, which was issued by the House select committee investigating last year’s Capitol riot, was “self-incriminating.”
“The January 6 Committee investigating the insurrection just subpoenaed Donald Trump to testify and Donald Trump responded, sort of, with a letter. A letter that is deeply and sharply self-incriminating,” Kirschner said.
The select committee on Thursday unanimously agreed to subpoena Trump for documents and testimony related to the insurrection that unfolded on January 6, 2021, saying that the former president “is required to answer for his actions.”
“We have left no doubt—none—that Donald Trump led an effort to upend American democracy that directly resulted in the violence of January 6,” the committee’s chairman Bennie Thompson said. “He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on January 6. So we want to hear from him.”
In response, Trump released a lengthy statement that didn’t mention how he will respond to the subpoena, including whether or not he intends to testify or deny most of the allegations made against him.
Initially, Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Thursday night that he would share his response to the “unselect Committee of political Hacks & Thugs” on Friday morning.
Trump ended up sharing a memo addressed to Thompson and other panel members that was titled “peacefully patriotically” in which he continued to tout his baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged and stolen” by widespread voter fraud.
The ex-president’s 14-page letter opens with “THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!” The letter blames the panel for spending “hundreds of millions of dollars” on the “Charade and Witch Hunt” instead of disputing claims of voter fraud. Trump added that the panel instead “targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself.”
Kirschner said on Friday that if he was the prosecutor handling the criminal case against Trump, he would present the letter to the jury as “further evidence of Donald Trump’s ongoing conspiracy to commit offenses against and defraud the United States.”
The former federal prosecutor added: “He didn’t write that letter, he had help, he had somebody draft that letter with him or for him. And here’s what I would say, anybody who helped or participated in the drafting of that letter, with or for Donald Trump, needs to be looked at as a co-conspirator because this letter is a continued effort to deceive the American people.”
In touting his claims of widespread voter fraud, Trump referred to those who believed his election fraud claims in his letter. At one point, he wrote that “a majority of people” in the country said that the election was “dishonest,” adding that “a large percentage of American Citizens, including almost the entire Republican Party, feel that the Election was Rigged and Stolen (because they have seen the determinative evidence, some of which is attached to this letter).”
Kirschner also pointed out the four pictures attached to Trump’s letter showing the size of the crowds at the rally on January 6, 2021, saying that he finds those photos are “useful from an evidentiary standpoint.”
“The size of the crowd on January 6 at his…rally doesn’t help him, doesn’t exonerate him, doesn’t give him some kind of a defense…it is a tribute to the success of Donald Trump’s lies. The big steal. It is photographic proof of the success of Donald Trump’s big lie and it is therefore incriminating,” Kirschner said.
Panel Holds Last Public Hearing Before the Midterms
On Thursday, the select committee held its last public hearing before the midterm elections in November, and showed new evidence that the members of the panel said made Trump “the central cause” of the riot.
Thompson confirmed that the evidence presented by the committee “did not come from Democrats or opponents of Donald Trump,” but that it came from Trump’s family, former Trump officials, White House aides, and top state and national Republican figures.
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s media office for comment.
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