Members of the now-defunct January 6 investigating committee in the House have been put on notice by former President Donald Trump, and they are seemingly preparing to be targeted should he win the White House this November.
Last month, Trump posted on social media channels that the members of that committee — which he often criticized as politically motivated — should be put in jail.
Those comments fall in line with others he has made over the last year. For instance, he vowed that he’d be a dictator on “day one” if he were to win the White House, and also said he’d “have no choice” but to put his political opponents in jail.
While it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Trump would win the GOP nomination when he made those comments last December and August, respectively, it is now. As such, the members of that committee are apparently planning for what might happen if Trump is president again.
Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren recently said of Trump:
“If he intends to eliminate our constitutional system and start arresting his political enemies, I guess I would be on that list. One thing I did learn on the committee is to pay attention and listen to what Trump says, because he means it.”
She added that she hasn’t started to plan for how she might thwart any political retribution Trump might try to take against her.
But, another prominent member of that committee — California Representative Adam Schiff — said he’s currently having “real-time conversations” with members of his staff regarding his safety and theirs if Trump ultimately follows through on the threats he has made.
As Schiff said:
“We’re taking this seriously, because we have to. We’ve seen this movie before … and how perilous it is to ignore what someone is saying when they say they want to be a dictator.”
While Trump is campaigning hard for president as the November election approaches, the four criminal cases against him are proceeding slowly. While the riot at the U.S. Capitol building happened in early 2021, the Department of Justice didn’t hand down an indictment on Trump over his role until August of 2023.
Trump was charged with four different felony counts then, but the former president’s attorneys have used many tactics to delay the start of that trial.
Special counsel Jack Smith, who’s leading the government’s case, was hoping for the trial to start this spring, but the Supreme Court was having none of that. At the end of this month, the high court is set to take up the claim that Trump is taking that he holds presidential immunity over the case.
A decision isn’t expected until the middle of the summer, and then it’s likely that the trial wouldn’t begin for at least 90 days after that.
Schiff referenced this in a recent interview, saying:
“I’m fearful that the Supreme Court is deliberately slow-walking this. The claim [of presidential immunity] is borderline frivolous … they’re drawing it out just enough to make it almost infeasible to try [the cases] before the election. It’s still possible to get it done. And I think voters deserve to have that information.”
