McConnell said after voting to acquit Donald Trump at the conclusion of his second impeachment trial that the former president was still liable for everything he did while he was in office as an ordinary citizen.
The Kentucky Republican said that he didn't get away with anything yet.
On the other side of the Capitol, another well-known Republican lawmaker is getting more specific about the legal consequences awaiting Trump over his role in inciting the deadly January 6 attack that halted the official certification of the 2020 presidential election.
In recent days, Liz Cheney of Wyoming has drawn attention with public remarks that directly addressed Trump's potential criminal culpability in connection with the Capitol siege.
Cheney, the Republican vice chair of the House committee investigating January 6, called attention to a federal statute making it illegal to obstruct an official proceeding. The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney spoke up about Trump's legal liability as the panel took steps to hold his former White House chief of staff, MarkMeadows, in contempt of Congress.
The question will be posed in front of this Committee: Did Donald Trump corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress's official proceeding to count electoral votes? Cheney said something. Mr. Meadows' testimony will tell us about those issues.
Legal experts saw a reference to a charge the Justice Department has already brought against hundreds of January 6 defendants: "corruptly obstructing an official proceeding." If evidence emerges that Trump planned or was aware of the violence on January 6, the statute could be relevant for any prosecution.
It all depends on the facts. If the Capitol storming people can be prosecuted for obstructing a congressional proceeding, if they played a role in planning it, and if they aided and abetted it, then they are equally liable, said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor.
They have to show that he had a role in it, but didn't do anything. They have to show that he played a role in causing it, not that the riot went out of control and he just gleefully watched it happen.
A federal judge upheld the use of an obstruction charge.
Brent Stirton
The obstruction charge was upheld in the Capitol rioter case.
Cheney is not pulling from thin air with her reference to the federal criminal code. The obstruction of congressional proceedings charge was upheld by a federal judge in Washington, DC, just days before her most recent remarks.
Two defendants in the Capitol riot case argued that Congress' certification of Joe Biden's electoral victory wasn't an official proceeding for the purposes of the statute.
The judge dismissed the notion that the term "corruptly" was vague in the statute and that the two defendants' conduct didn't impede the proceedings of January 6.
Donald Trump Jr. is the son of Donald Trump.
Eva Marie Uzcategui is a photographer.
There needs to be more evidence.
Cheney mentioned the statute Monday after rattling off texts in which Fox News anchors, lawmakers and even the then-president's eldest son urged him to get the angry mob to stand down. On January 6, Trump allies viewed the sitting president as an authority figure who could end the attack that left five people dead.
The former US attorneys were struck by Cheney's reference to a criminal statute in discussing the House select panel's interest in Trump.
They were his command. "Cheney raising the idea that by failing to stop them, Trump impeded Congress could be a crime," wrote Joyce Vance, a former US attorney in northern Alabama.
They need Meadows's testimony becauseCheney is going to possible criminal culpability by Trump. Harry Litman was the top federal prosecutor in western Pennsylvania during the Obama administration.
In an interview, Eliason said that the texts Cheney used to make his case against Trump were not enough to make a case against him.
"I don't think that the idea that people thought he could stop it, and he didn't act or act quickly, establishes criminal liability for what happened," said Eliason, who once oversaw the public corruption unit within the federal prosecutor's office in Washington, DC.
There is more evidence that could still come out that could change the situation for the former president. He said that if there was more suggestion that he had more of an active role in encouraging it to happen, the charge would apply to him.
