January 6 House committee refers Trump to DOJ on 4 criminal charges for role in Capitol riot to overturn election
The Jan. 6 committee on Monday unanimously recommended criminal charges against former President Donald Trump for seeking to overturn his election loss and inspiring the storming of the Capitol, an unprecedented and historic step that caps an explosive 17-month probe.
The bipartisan congressional committee referred Trump to the Department of Justice to face charges in a final salvo aimed at the former president who it says was singularly responsible for the bloody attack on the citadel of American democracy.
Trump should face four potential crimes: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States government, conspiracy to make false statements and insurrection, the panel said.
“If we are to survive as a nation of laws and democracy, this can never happen again,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the panel’s chair.
“No one, including a former president, can be above the law,” he added.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said the most shocking evidence revealed that Trump sat in the Oval Office watching television as the violence unfolded — but did nothing to stop it.
”This was an utter moral failing and a clear dereliction of duty,” said Cheney, the panel’s vice chair. “He is unfit for any office.”
The referral has no binding legal force and it’s up to federal prosecutors led by newly minted Special Counsel Jack Smith to decide who if anyone will face charges.
But the panel of seven Democrats and two outspoken Republican critics of Trump wants to leave no doubt that it considers him to bear criminal responsibility for the 2021 attack that aimed to prevent the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in history.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) suggested that Trump’s incitement of the riot, especially his demand that they “fight like hell” to keep him in power, amounted to the crime of insurrection against the United States.
“Nothing could be a greater betrayal,” Raskin said.
The committee also referred far right-wing Trump lawyer John Eastman to the DOJ for prosecution. He concocted a scheme to get GOP-run states to create alternate slates of pro-Trump electors.
The panel named other insiders, including ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Chesebro, as likely Trump accomplices but did not specifically refer them to prosecutors.
The committee moved to refer five House Republicans — including Republican leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — to the Ethics Committee for ignoring subpoenas, although it’s unlikely they will face meaningful sanctions.
Trump did not immediately comment on the committee’s actions but has regularly denounced it as a partisan witch hunt.
Democrats hailed the panel’s work.
“Our Founders made clear that, in the United States of America, no one is above the law,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “This bedrock principle remains unequivocally true, and justice must be done.”
The committee will dissolve when the new Republican-led House takes office after New Year’s Day.
Aside from recommending charges against Trump and others, it also released an executive summary of its findings. The summary included 17 findings about the Jan. 6 attacks, 15 of them related to Trump.
The committee conducted more than 1,000 interviews, held 10 well-watched public hearings and collected more than 1 million documents since it was launched by Democrats in July 2021.
Trump rebuffed a subpoena to testify despite claiming that he wanted to tell his side of the story.
Driven by Trump’s lies about nonexistent election fraud, the thousands of extremist followers of Trump attacked the Capitol after he riled them up with a fiery speech.
The Jan. 6. rioters attacked police, injuring many, broke into the Capitol and forced lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to run for their lives.
They set up a mock gallows outside and chanted “Hang Mike Pence” after he refused to back Trump’s effort to reject the electoral votes of some states that voted for President Biden.
Five people died, including a pro-Trump protester, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a police officer as she and a group of attackers sought to violently break into the House chambers where lawmakers were sheltering.
Along with inciting the attack, witnesses said Trump angrily sought to be driven to the Capitol to lead the rioters.
He failed to lift a finger to protect Congress and Pence in real time, the committee said, and even tweeted an attack on Pence as rioters hunted down the vice president inside the Capitol.
The committee’s stated mission was to create a record for history of what happened on Jan. 6 and what led to it — a task that has taken on more significance as Republicans and Trump have sought to downplay the seriousness of the attack and even defend the attackers as peaceful patriots.
The panel played an important evidence-gathering role as it obtained testimony and documents from some onetime key Trump allies. Others defied its subpoenas, including former Trump aide Steve Bannon, who was convicted of contempt of Congress.
Apart from the attack, the panel bared detailed evidence of Trump’s wide-ranging plot to overturn the election results, including his effort to bully state officials into somehow reversing his narrow losses to Biden in several swing states including Arizona and Georgia.
When that effort fell flat, he moved on to the fake electors scheme and sought to pressure Pence into going along with it.
The physical attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 amounted to a last-ditch effort to block Congress from certifying Biden as the new president, the committee claimed.
As the committee has proceeded, federal prosecutors have mounted a slower-moving investigation of their own, with grand juries collecting sworn evidence.
The criminal probe has more teeth than the congressional investigation because prosecutors can force witnesses to appear and answer questions, including some that dodged the panel.
Smith, an aggressive former Brooklyn federal prosecutor, is heading the Jan. 6 criminal probe as well as a separate investigation into Trump’s removal of highly classified White House documents to his Florida resort home.
With Michael McAuliff
