- Former DOJ officials say the evidence is now clear that Trump should be charged for his actions after the 2020 election.
- The January 6 panel has helped uncover evidence that "is now overwhelming," they wrote in an op-ed.
- They warn of significant damage to America's future if Trump is not prosecuted for his conduct.
Former Justice Department officials who served in Republican administrations, issued a call on Friday for the DOJ to prosecute Donald Trump, arguing that the January 6 committee has uncovered sufficient evidence for the unprecedented prosecution of a former president.
"The evidence is now overwhelming that Donald Trump was the driving force behind a massive criminal conspiracy to interfere with the official January 6 congressional proceeding and to defraud the United States of a fair election outcome," the trio of Donald Ayer, Stuart M. Gerson, and Dennis Aftergut wrote in an opinion piece for The Atlantic.
Ayer and Gerson worked in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Gerson also briefly served as the acting attorney general under President Bill Clinton, while Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor and former chief assistant city attorney for San Francisco.
They wrote that it is abundantly clear how unusual it would be to charge a former president and someone who is the leading candidate for the 2024 GOP nomination, but warned that "the damage to America's future that would be inflicted by giving him a pass far outweighs the risks of prosecuting him."
"Any argument that Donald Trump lacked provable criminal intent is contradicted by the facts elicited by the January 6 committee. And the tradition of not prosecuting a former president must yield to the manifest need to protect our constitutional form of government and to ensure that the violent effort to overthrow it is never repeated," they wrote.
The January 6 committee's seven hearings, they said, point to evidence collected by Just Security, an online forum where national security law and policy are analyzed, that would sustain charges of criminal solicitation of election fraud, a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstruction of Congress.
The panel has shown, they said, that Trump was at the center of a "scheme" to overturn the 2020 election by showing how he ignored repeated statements by his aides and officials, and continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence in the lead-up to the formal counting and certification of the Electoral College vote on January 6.
"As if to illustrate how personal his intervention was (and is), Republican Liz Cheney, the committee's vice chair and the representative from Wyoming, dropped a bombshell at the end of Tuesday's hearing: Sometime since the previous hearing on June 28, Trump himself had contacted a witness, something that his lawyers certainly could have told him could easily lead to charges of witness tampering," they wrote.
The former prosecutors also conclude that Trump and his allies' efforts since he left office have only made it clear that he could try to do something again in 2024.
"For the past 18 months, and presently, Trump himself and his supporters have been engaged in concerted efforts across the country to prepare for a similar, but better-planned, effort to overcome the minority status of Trump's support and put him back in the White House," they wrote. "Moreover, if the efforts of the former president and his supporters garner a pass from the federal authorities, even in the face of such overwhelming evidence, Trump will not be the only one ready to play this game for another round."
A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump himself has repeatedly mocked the January 6 committee and has questioned the accuracy of what some witnesses have told the panel under oath.