The Jan. 6 Capitol rebel has taken a critical toll on america' standing and repute on the world stage, former Homeland Safety Secretary Jeh Johnson stated Friday, including that he believes there's possible sufficient proof from the Home committee hearings to carry legal costs in opposition to former President Donald Trump.
Matthew Pottinger, the deputy nationwide safety adviser to former President Trump, testified earlier than the Home Jan. 6 committee Thursday that the Capitol riot "emboldened our enemies by serving to give them ammunition to feed a story that our system of presidency does not work, that the U.S. is in decline."
"I do share that evaluation," Johnson advised CBS' senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge.
Johnson, who served as Homeland Safety secretary in former President Barack Obama's second time period, known as presidential transitions a "susceptible time."
"Within the eyes of our mates and adversaries, seeing an rebel on the U.S. Capitol made them query, I'm positive, how enduring, how sturdy and the way secure, our democracy actually is," Johnson stated. "We now have traditionally boasted that we're probably the most enduring democracy on the earth, and that we at all times have peaceable transitions of energy. Regrettably, we can not say that anymore."
The Jan 6. committee additionally introduced testimony Thursday from an nameless White Home safety official who stated that the Secret Service element for former Vice President Mike Pence "had been beginning to concern for their very own lives" because the rioters invaded the Capitol.
Johnson, who oversaw the Secret Service as Homeland Safety secretary, known as that "unprecedented."
"I do not assume I've ever witnessed, heard of, in modern occasions, and even over the course of historical past, a state of affairs the place line Secret Service brokers – members of safety particulars, feared for their very own lives and commenced phoning or radioing, 'Talk with my household, I'll not see them.' That was unprecedented, I consider."
Johnson added that Trump's predilection for substitute of Senate-confirmed cupboard members with "appearing" heads throughout his presidency undermined the continuity of presidency operations.
"So on Jan. 6, 2021, you had an appearing lawyer common, an appearing secretary of protection and an appearing secretary of Homeland Safety, who had been mainly heading for the exits in two weeks – and it led to, contributed to, the chaotic state of affairs that we had the place our authorities was no more proactive in doing what they wanted to do to guard the perimeter of the U.S. Capitol," Johnson stated.
Johnson – a lawyer and former federal prosecutor in New York – stated that primarily based on the proof introduced within the Jan. 6 hearings, there may be possible sufficient within the "federal legal code" to carry costs in opposition to Trump.
"There is a statute within the federal legal code … that criminalizes an rebel," Johnson stated. "This was in my judgment, the very definition of an rebel, and the statute in federal legislation punishes those that have interaction within the rebel, who incite the rebel, and who give help and luxury thereto. It's troublesome for me to see how President Trump, given all of the proof we find out about, isn't inside that legal statute. And I think that an aggressive federal prosecutor would regard this as a prosecutable, indictable case."