Former Republican Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger is a critic of President-elect Donald Trump but doesn’t think he will throw members of the Jan. 6 committee in jail for investigating the riot.
Trump made “retribution” a key plank of the platform he rode to victory on a month ago. Now that he’s weeks from returning to the White House, the president-elect’s foes are wondering what his promises will look like in action.
Kinzinger, who was a member of the now-defunct Jan. 6 committee, was asked Sunday on CNN if he was worried Trump would put him in jail.
“Ultimately, when we talked about him throwing his ketchup and hamburger against the wall, there’s nothing illegal about that, and most of the people that testified were actually his Republicans, you know, fellow Republicans went up and spoke,” Kinzinger said. “So look, he’s all butt hurt right now because he was embarrassed. He’s not gonna come after us, and I’m not worried about it at all.”
Trump was coy himself when he was asked on Meet the Press about whether he would retaliate with his own lawfare campaign against Democrats, who he has said have used the Department of Justice and special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into him as a way to punish him. The president-elect put the onus on his attorney general appointee Pam Bondi and FBI director appointee Kash Patel.
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“I will say this, no, I’m not doing that unless I find something that I think is reasonable, but that’s not going to be my decision,” Trump said. “That’s going to be Pam Bondi’s decision, and, to a different extent, Kash Patel, assuming they’re both there, and I think they’re both going to get approved. But I — I — you know, while you ask me that, what they’ve done to me with weaponization is a disgrace.”
Smith attempted to speed up his cases against Trump and go to trial before this month’s election. These cases, even though they occurred at the end of Trump’s first term in 2020, weren’t brought to until after Trump announced his reelection campaign.
