Congress’s Jan. 6th committee announced that it would recommend four federal charges against former president Donald Trump for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election and fomenting the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The committee’s referral to the Justice Department includes charges of inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and obstruction of an act of Congress.
The Justice Department can now choose whether to act by prosecuting the former president. Northwestern faculty from the Pritzker School of Law and Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences are available to share their expertise on the situation and its implications.
Andrew Koppelman is the John Paul Stevens Professor of Law at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He is an expert on constitutional law and the Supreme Court. He can be reached by contacting Max Witynski at [email protected].
Quote from Professor Koppelman
“The fundamental idea of constitutional law is that even the highest public officials can’t break the law with impunity. The criminal referral of Trump vindicates that idea. America is not a monarchy.”
James Druckman is the Payson S. Wild Professor of Political Science in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and associate director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern. He is a researcher for the COVID States Project and the Strengthening Democracy Challenge. He can be reached at [email protected].
Quote from Professor Druckman
“Although we didn’t have direct data from those projects [COVID States and Strengthening Democracy], my reading of the survey data suggests this reflects a country that is moving in a sympathetic direction.
“The [Jan. 6 committee] recommendations come as voters, for the first time, since the 2020 elections, are expressing more confidence in elections and democracy. Partisans from both sides also have become increasingly suspicious of some of former President Trump’s behaviors (e.g., the taking of classified documents to Mar-a-Lago). Whether this shift in public attitudes emboldens the Department of Justice to move forward remains to be seen, however.”
Kevin Boyle is the William Mason Smith Professor of American History. His focus areas include economic and labor history, African Diaspora and African American history and legal and criminal history. He is the author of “The Shattering: America in the 1960s” (W.W. Norton, 2021) and was a Pulitzer finalist for “The Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age.” He can be reached at [email protected] or by contacting Stephanie Kulke at [email protected].
Quote from Professor Boyle
“At its final session, the Jan. 6 committee played a video of Donald Trump’s longtime aide Hope Hicks describing a conversation she had with the president in the tumultuous days after the 2020 election. She tried to warn him, she said, that his manic response to his defeat would destroy his legacy. He brushed her off with the toxic mix of bravado and insecurity that defines his sense of the world. ‘Nobody will care about my legacy if I lose,’ he told her. ‘The only thing that matters is winning.’
“There was the deepest danger that the Jan. 6 committee exposed. Not the president’s wild claims, his chaotic plotting, or his calls to violence, but his belief that politics is nothing more than a blood sport, to be pursued by any means necessary. And if democratic processes stand in the way of victory, then democracy be damned — as it still may be, if we don’t purge that poisonous idea from our public life once and for all.”
Juliet Sorensen is a clinical professor of law at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law. She is an expert on legal ethics, corruption and human rights and can discuss legal questions relating to ongoing investigations by the Department of Justice against the former president and how the Department’s actions may be impacted by the committee’s criminal referral. She can be reached by contacting Max Witynski at [email protected].
