'Profoundly sad and scary:' J6 committee members speak out after Jack Smith report drops

WASHINGTON — Some members of the House Select Committee investigating the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attacks are responding now that the Justice Department has published special counsel Jack Smith's final report.

Speaking to Raw Story on Wednesday, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said the committee did "good work" that "pointed out Donald Trump's criminality" around the election.

"He's trying to rewrite January 6," she said. "He can't erase it. What he did is obvious."

She encouraged anyone who disagrees to view the hours and hours of footage of "the violence he initiated."

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Smith concluded in his report that the evidence he uncovered met the standard necessary for him to bring the indictment.

Lofgren told Raw Story that Smith "outlined the evidence he has that Trump was guilty of a crime. That's not new, the committee found the same thing."

She went on to say "there's nothing to be done with the report" because "we can't prosecute the president" under the Office of Legal Counsel regulation.

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) has yet to read the 174-page report, but he expects the conclusions to be similar to those of his committee when it investigated the matter in 2021.

He called the report important not only for historical purposes but also for accountability.

"That's why I've advocated for the grand jury transcripts of the Mike Pence interview in addition to all of the special counsel reports," Aguilar continued. "And the American people deserve to know what Donald Trump did on Jan. 6, leading up to Jan. 6 and after."

Both Aguilar and Lofgren disputed a Punchbowl News report saying that Jan. 6 committee members are in talks with the White House about pardons out of fear that Trump will come after them. The members said that they hadn't spoken to the White House and aren't seeking pardons.

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"I didn't do anything wrong. I stand by the work that we did," said Aguilar, citing the Constitution's "Speech and Debate Clause," which protects congressional members from official duties.

He called a pardon "hypothetical" and "theoretical" until Trump comes after those members.

Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) wasn't on the Jan. 6 committee, but she is on the House Judiciary Committee. She's frustrated that the Justice Department took so long to indict Trump and move forward with a case.

"It should have come back ages ago," she said of Smith's report, and it's something other members she knows share.

"The timing needed to be different. And not just like — literally, just for me, I want to be clear, the timing needed to be different, honestly, for shoring up the democracy. This is so profoundly sad and scary. What he did, all the things he tried to do to overturn a free and fair election, and so many of his accomplices are still sitting with me on the floor."

She agreed that the American people did not have access to the facts in time for the election.

"But her emails," Balint said, repeating a common meme used by Democrats joking about why voters supported Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016. "This is one of those moments. The guy literally tried to overturn a free and fair election. He had slates of fake electors. He tried to hand stuff to [Mike] Pence on the floor! And her emails."