Capitol attack panel says Trump should not be near Oval Office

The committee's chairman Bennie Thompson said that he did not expect the panel to make a recommendation to charge the former president with a alleged role in the Capitol attack, and that the vice-chairwoman of the House Committee on the January 6 attack on the US Capitol is not ruling out a criminal referral against Donald Trump, saying a man as dangerous as him can never be near the Oval Office.

On a pre-recorded interview on ABC s This Week, Cheney said she, Thompson and others on the committee could change their minds about their initial position after sworn testimony by Trump that Trump knowingly sent armed supporters to the Capitol on the day of the attack, in hopes of preventing congressional certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

What kind of man knows when a mob is armed and sends the mob to attack the Capitol? Cheney said on the program that some in the crowd intended to hang Mike Pence that day. His own vice-president was under threat from Congress. It is very chilling. The Republican representative from Wyoming pointed out that the US justice department does not need a recommendation from the Capitol attack committee to charge Trump. The chairman of seven Democrats and two Republicans has made such referrals in the cases of former Trump aides Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino, who refused to cooperate with the committee.

The justice department, the only entity that can prosecute Trump, has filed charges against Bannon and Navarro, who have pleaded not guilty. Scavino or Meadows did not charge.

The daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, Cheney, also spent much of her Sunday appearance defending the testimony of former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson at a recent committee hearing.

Many believe that part of Hutchinson's testimony drew Trump closer than ever to demonstrable criminal conduct. She said Trump knew some of the crowd that had handguns and rifles in his speech at the White House on the day of the Capitol attack. Hutchinson testified that the president still urged his audience to fight like hell and march on Capitol.

A Senate committee later linked seven deaths to the ensuing violence at the Capitol. The key legal questions about Trump's potential criminal exposure appear to be whether he intended to cause the violence and knew it was likely to occur, according to experts.

Hutchinson testified under oath that Trump was furious that the Secret Service denied him permission to go to Capitol that day, at one point even lunging for the steering wheel of the vehicle in which he was being driven that day. That aspect of her testimony was quickly met with reports in some quarters that senior Secret Service agents were prepared to testify that Trump never did that.

On Sunday, Cheney said that the committee was prepared to stage more sworn testimony about Trump's anger at not being allowed to go to the Capitol at the height of the attack, a culmination of his false claims that electoral fraudsters had stolen the election from him.

Cheney said that the committee is not going to stand by and watch Hutchinson's character be assassinated, as she said in her first sit-down media interview during the panel's six hearings.

Cheney said the hearings convinced her that Donald Trump can never be near the Oval Office again and she believes that the Republican party will lose its legitimacy if it chooses to run for president against Biden in 2024.

He can't be the party nominee, Cheney said.