‘This is the Smoking Gun’: Ken Starr Deputy Says New Testimony is Evidence Trump Committed Seditious Conspiracy
As reactions poured in from Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony on Tuesday before the House Jan. 6 Committee, one prominent lawyer said the testimony makes the case for “seditious conspiracy charges” against former President Donald Trump.
“This is the smoking gun,” said Solomon Wisenberg to New York Times reporter Peter Baker.
Baker notes that Wisenberg is a former deputy independent counsel in Ken Starr’s investigation that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment and he added that “there isn’t any question this establishes a prima facie case for his [Trump’s] criminal culpability on seditious conspiracy charges.”
Did Trump commit a crime? “This is the smoking gun,” Sol Wisenberg, a former deputy to Ken Starr, tells me about today’s hearing. “There isn’t any question this establishes a prima facie case for his criminal culpability on seditious conspiracy charges.”
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) June 28, 2022
Just Security editor Asha Rangappa had a similar take, writing on Twitter, “Just so you know Hutchinson is implicating Trump and Meadows in a seditious conspiracy.”
Just so you know Hutchinson is implicating Trump and Meadows in a seditious conspiracy
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) June 28, 2022
The term “seditious conspiracy” began to trend on Twitter on Tuesday during the hearings and shot up in Google searches as users looked up the legal definition.
A quick Google search shows the definition to be:
Seditious conspiracy is a crime in various jurisdictions of conspiring against the authority or legitimacy of the state.
Google searches of “seditious conspiracy” over the last four hours pic.twitter.com/imd11txrWu
— Evan Siegfried (@evansiegfried) June 28, 2022
Neither Wisenberg nor Rangappa went into the what specifically from Hutchinson’s testimony adds to the case for “seditious conspiracy” against Trump or his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows – who was Hutchinson’s boss in the White House. However, it is clear that Hutchinson’s testimony establishes that both Meadows and Trump were aware of the danger their actions posed and that their ultimate goal was to stop the transition of power.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) raised to term earlier in the hearings saying that the committee will expose “plots to commit seditious conspiracy on January 6th.”
“The charge of ‘seditious conspiracy’ requires prosecutors to prove that at least two people conspired to use force to overthrow the government, oppose its authority or subvert the execution of a U.S. law,” wrote Greg Sargent in the Washington Post in mid-June. “Such charges have been brought against some of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers” already he notes. Whether or not those charges could possibly stick to Trump as well is still an open question.
