Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), a member of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 riot, weighed in on what it would mean if the Department of Justice chose not to prosecute former President Donald Trump for his role.
Kinzinger acknowledged that only “failed democracies” prosecuted previous administrations but said the Justice Department not prosecuting Trump over “an obvious coup attempt” on January 6 set a “far worse precedent.”
“I can’t do the DOJ’s job. As a not-lawyer, you know, there’s all kinds of threshold questions, but my belief is this: we never want to get to a position in a country where we prosecute last administrations because that’s what failed democracies do,” Kinzinger outlined. “But if a failed coup, and an obvious coup attempt, and a president that didn’t just choose not to act but willfully watched to see where the mob would go for three hours on January 6, if he is not held accountable through law, I actually fear that that is a far worse precedent than anything else.”
“I think it is essential for DOJ to at least run all the way up, all the information they can, make the determination if they can and should indict,” he continued. “But I’ve got to tell you, if we just wash this under the rug and say, you know, for the sake of the country, let’s put this aside, there’s going to be somebody else, whether it’s Donald Trump in 2024 or somebody else somewhere down the line that recognizes that as the floor of their behavior and pushes even more. And we can’t survive that.”
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