by Daniel Chaitin, Deputy News Editor |
| January 18, 2022
Rep. Eric Swalwell, a vocal Trump critic, warned that Republicans will "never peacefully concede power again" if they prevail in the midterm elections.
The California Democrat ratcheted up the rhetoric during an interview Monday in which he also asserted that the investigation by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot may not have even been needed to determine that former President Donald Trump committed a crime in connection to the events on Jan. 6.
"This is the greatest crime ever in America where members of Congress were witnesses. We also now formally know it was an act of sedition that has been charged against at least 10 co-defendants," Swalwell told MSNBC host Joy Reid, referring to the federal indictment last week against Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and 10 others.
"The Republicans would absolutely do this to us, so we shouldn't have any sort of notion of virtue that we are better than they are," the congressman added.
The Jan. 6 committee has two Republican members in Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both of whom are anti-Trump, but the panel's detractors argue that it is being used as a political weapon against the former president and his allies. Among these critics are Reps. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks, two Republicans who were barred from joining the select Jan. 6 committee by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and are now conducting their own counterinvestigation into the Capitol riot.
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Swalwell, who is not a member of the panel, turned his focus to November, when Republicans are widely expected to win control of the House and possibly the Senate, and referred to voter integrity measures passed in several red states last year that House Democrats are trying to counter with two election overhaul bills that they say will alleviate efforts to make it harder for people to vote, minorities in particular.
"We get one shot at this before the midterms, where they're trying to put every barrier in place to keep people from voting, and they will never, I promise you — if they win the midterms, they will never peacefully concede power again," Swalwell said, adding that "this is our only shot."
As for Trump, Swalwell noted the former president did not join the hundreds of rioters who stormed the Capitol, disrupting lawmakers as they certified President Joe Biden's 2020 election victory, but he argued that Trump "certainly incited the mob and aimed the mob and told them to go to the Capitol."
"I do have fear that we are overthinking a crime that was committed in plain sight," Swalwell added. "I don't really even think you even need to run much of an investigation around what Donald Trump was doing because he put it on his Twitter, he financed it with the Facebook ads that he paid for, and he said it in plain sight for millions of people to hear and the thousands on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse to take as their instructions. And then afterward, you saw multiple people tell the FBI or tell reporters they were sent there by Trump and left there only once Donald Trump told them it was time to leave."
Trump was impeached on the charge that he incited an insurrection in connection to the Capitol riot but was acquitted by the GOP-led Senate at the time. Although Trump was spared a conviction that would block him from taking back the White House in a couple of years, another member of the Jan. 6 committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, recently floated using the 14th Amendment as a way to block Trump from holding office again.
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