Elizabeth Warren says DoJ can’t avoid prosecuting Trump after revelations from Jan 6 hearings

‘No person is above the law in this country. I can’t say it any more clearly than that,’ Attorney General Merrick Garland said

Senator Elizabeth Warren has said she does not see how the Department of Justice can do anything but indict former President Donald Trump following recent revelations made during the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot.

Ms Warren spoke with Raw Story, saying she could not see a scenario in which the Department of Justice can proceed with their investigation into the Capitol riot without pursuing charges against Mr Trump.

"Based on the House investigation I don't see how they could avoid that," she said. "Ultimately the Department of Justice will make their own independent decision about whether they have enough evidence to prosecute some or all of the people involved in the January 6 insurrection. DOJ has to make their own independent decision and that means independent of the politics. That's how the justice system works."

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the probe into the Capitol riot was the "most wide-ranging investigation, and the most important investigation, that the Justice Department has ever entered into."

"And we have done so because this effort to upend a legitimate election – transferring power from one administration to another – cuts at the fundamental of American democracy," Mr Garland told reporters.

He stressed it was important to "get this right" and "hold accountable every person who is criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election."

When reporters asked him if that included Mr Trump, he said it did.

"No person is above the law in this country. I can't say it any more clearly than that," he said. "There is nothing in the principles of prosecution, in any other factors which prevent us from investigating anyone – anyone – who's criminally responsible for an attempt to undo a democratic election."

Mr Trump was impeached for a second time in the aftermath of the Capitol riot after he was charged with inciting and insurrection. He was eventually acquitted by the Senate thanks to loyalist Republicans.

During the last public hearing of the Jan 6 committee, several of Mr Trump's staffers explained how the former president's actions prompted their resignations.

Former White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews said seeing Mr Trump's video address during the Capitol riot — in which he said he "loved" the rioters — was "disturbing" and drover her to resign.

"And that was disturbing to me because he didn't distinguish between those that peacefully attended his speech earlier that day and those that we watched cause violence at the Capitol," she said.

Matthew Pottinger, the former Deputy National Security Advisor under Mr Trump, resigned after the former president wrote a tweet attacking then-Vice President Mike Pence.

"One of my aides handed me a sheet of paper that contained the tweet that you just read. I read it and was quite disturbed by it. I was disturbed and worried to see that the president was attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional duty. So the tweet looked to me like the opposite of what what we really needed at that moment, which was a de-escalation," he said.." And that's why I said earlier that it looked like fuel being poured on the fire. So that was the moment that I decided that I was going to resign, that that would be my last day at the White House."

Since the riot, more than 850 people have been arrested on various charges ranging from trespassing to seditious conspiracy for their roles in the failed insurrection of 6 January.