Raskin likens House GOP defending Trump over Jan. 6 to bank robbers

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Monday likened House GOP lawmakers who at first decried former President Trump and then defended him over the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot to “bank robbers” for their efforts to counter the final report from the House select committee on Jan. 6 with their own conclusions about alleged security failures during the riot.

Raskin noted that Republicans who faced dangers during the Capitol attack and “were crying for help” are trying to “minimize and trivialize” the event to express favor to Trump.

“So all of their attention will be on saying that somehow this was just a law enforcement failure. It’s completely transparent. We can read through it,” Raskin said on MSNBC shortly after the panel ended its last public meeting. Read the full 4,155-page, $1.7 trillion government funding bill released by Congress How Trump is likely to be haunted by Jan. 6 panel long after its exit

“Think of a bank robbery where someone masterminds a hit on a bank to rob the bank and then afterwards wants to blame the security guards for not picking up better on the clues or [not] having called in reinforcements or what have you. I mean, all those things might be right, but it doesn’t in any way absolve the people who were the bank robbers in the first place of what they did,” Raskin said.

The Jan. 6 panel on Monday announced criminal referrals against the former president — recommending that the Department of Justice criminally investigate Trump for inciting an insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to make a false statement and obstruction of an official proceeding — as well as referrals to the House Ethics Committee for GOP lawmakers who shirked subpoenas. 

House Republicans have reportedly been prepping their rebuttal to the Jan. 6 panel’s final report, the culmination of the committee’s long-running investigation set for release in the coming days.