BY ANDREW STANTON ON 12/24/22 AT 10:50 AM EST

https://www.newsweek.com/this-trump-tweet-jan-6-could-his-downfall-former-prosecutor-says-1769492

Former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade revealed on Saturday the tweet Donald Trump sent on January 6, 2021, that could be his downfall.

The former president continues facing renewed scrutiny for his conduct surrounding the 2020 presidential election, after the House select committee investigating last year’s Capitol riot referred him for criminal charges to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and released its full report earlier this week.

Following his defeat, Trump repeatedly claimed, without providing substantial evidence, the election was stolen via widespread voter fraud. Lawmakers on the House select panel have sought to tie these claims to the riot, which saw a mob of Trump supporters engage in a failed attempt to force Congress to block the results, as well as show he did little to stop the violence.

McQuade, who from 2010 to 2017 served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, pointed to one of Trump’s tweets that could boost prosecutors’ case against him in which he targeted former Vice President Mike Pence, who had declined to block the Electoral College certification to overturn Joe Biden‘s win.

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She said a 2:24 p.m. tweet in which Trump blasted Pence for not having the “courage” to overturn the election results could “pass” the Supreme Court‘s bar to prove his involvement in inciting an insurrection in an interview with The Hill.

Trump tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth.”

In the January 6 report, lawmakers said that Trump knew “exactly what he was doing” and that a staffer cautioned him that the tweet would imply “he had something to do with the” riot. McQuade told The Hill that focusing on this tweet in the report was a “stroke of genius.”

“I think it’s that tweet—and they frame it not as inciting an insurrection, but as assisting in an insurrection—I think that tweet probably passes that [Supreme Court] bar,” McQuade said.

Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, told Newsweek on Saturday that he agreed Trump’s tweet “may be enough to satisfy the test for proximate or legal causation.”

“Trump’s tweets can and will be used against him if he is tried. There’s no better evidence of what Trump was thinking than his own words. And written or recorded words are better evidence than spoken ones,” Rahmani said in written remarks.

January 6 Panel Releases Report

McQuade’s remarks come only days after the January 6 panel released its findings from its investigation into the Capitol riot. The report and criminal referrals do not guarantee a Trump prosecution—and the former president has maintained his innocence. However, he continues facing a separate DOJ probe into January 6 as well.

Among the findings of the report, lawmakers determined that the former president made “multiple efforts” to contact January 6 witnesses and engaged in 200 acts to try to overturn the election results.

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Other legal analysts have also weighed in on the report. Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said in a YouTube video on Friday that an indictment for the former president “writes itself.”

“This is like, you know, GPS for prosecutors. All they have to do is follow the prompts, follow the trail, look at the evidence of crime that’s been uncovered and documented by the January 6 committee—God bless them—and this is a criminal conspiracy indictment that writes itself,” he said.

Newsweek reached out to Trump’s office for comment.