Schiff: Trump Jan. 6 target letter ‘the most serious thing he’s faced’

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said the charges reportedly listed in the target letter that former President Trump received in the Jan. 6 probe represents the “most serious” charges Trump has faced yet.

“It’s hard to imagine a president being involved in more serious misconduct. So it’s the most serious thing he’s faced yet,” Schiff said in an interview on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show” with Jonathan Capehart. 

Trump reportedly received a target letter in Jack Smith’s probe into Trump’s attempts to hold onto power after the 2020 election, which listed three charges that Trump could be facing in another potential indictment: deprivation of rights, conspiracy to defraud the United States and tampering with a witness. 

Trump already was indicted in two separate cases — his alleged mishandling of national security documents and his alleged role in hush money payments in the months before the 2016 election. 

“I think these are the most serious charges that he faces,” Schiff said, noting the other indictments. “The Mar-a-Lago documents case was a threat to our national security. It’s very serious. Obviously, the multiple business fraud counts in New York are also serious, but this is essentially a set of charges revolving around his efforts to stop the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our history.”

Schiff, who served on the Jan. 6 select committee, did not take issue with the fact that the target letter did not mention a charge of incitement of an insurrection — which was the basis of Trump’s second impeachment, and which was among the crimes that the Jan. 6 committee recommended to the Justice Department for prosecution. 

“I think they’re really flip sides of the same coin,” he said of the charges, noting that the charges referred to in the target letter “are very serious.”

Schiff said he expects still to learn more information as the investigations into Trump’s actions surrounding the 2020 election continue to unfold. He mentioned the fact that several people were held in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the committee when subpoenaed. 

“I would imagine though, there will be a whole body of evidence that was not known to the January 6 committee, because many of the witnesses that the grand jury is hearing from are people that refuse to answer questions before Congress,” he said, adding, “The Justice Department has a much greater capability of compelling testimony. I would imagine there’s a whole body of evidence that we didn’t have access to.”

“At the same time, I do believe that the work we did, the evidence we put forward to the country and to the Justice Department really compelled them to look at these serious allegations of criminal activity by Donald Trump. I’m not sure that would have happened in the absence of the work that we did on the January 6 committee,” he said.