Capitol Attack Committee Jan. 6 recommends criminal charges against Trump

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A congressional committee investigating last year’s violent attack on the US Capitol voted in favor of recommending that the US Department of Justice pursue criminal charges against former President Donald Trump for his role in the failed insurrection.

During its latest public hearing on Monday, the nine-member, bipartisan panel unanimously said Trump should be prosecuted for aiding an insurrection, obstructing official government action, conspiring to defraud the United States and knowingly making false statements to authorities.

“We have never had a president of the United States raise a violent attempt to derail a transfer of power. I think almost two years later, this is still a time for reflection and reckoning,” said Benny Thompson, the Democratic member of the Mississippi House of Representatives who chairs the committee.

He added, “There is one factor that I think is most important in preventing another January 6th: accountability.” “The evidence we have gathered points to further action . . . accountability that can only be found in the criminal justice system.

Details of the criminal referrals were provided by Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democratic congressman, who said John Eastman, Trump’s former attorney, and other allies of the former president should be criminally prosecuted in connection with the riots. “Our system is not a justice system where pedestrians go to jail and masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass,” Raskin said.

The congressional committee’s final actions and recommendations are likely to deepen the former president’s legal woes as he makes a new bid for the White House. The Department of Justice, where Special Counsel Jack Smith handled the federal investigations into the former president, will make the final decision on whether to indict him. Smith’s office declined to comment.

The committee also referred four Republicans — including Kevin McCarthy, the party’s House leader — to the bipartisan House Ethics Committee for their refusal to cooperate in its investigation, including failure to comply with subpoenas.

The vote is the culmination of the committee’s effort to highlight Trump’s complicity with the mob that stormed the Capitol in order to prevent Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election from being certified.

Every president in our history has advocated for this orderly transfer of power—with one exception. Jan. 6, 2021, was the first time a US president refused his constitutional duty to peacefully transfer power to the next, said Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, who is the committee’s vice chair.

She added, “No man who acted in this manner at that moment in time could serve in any position of authority in our nation again.” “He is unfit for any position.”

The committee’s latest flurry of activity comes as Trump’s stranglehold in the Republican Party is being called into question after several of his favored candidates lost high-profile races in the midterm elections. Polls show Republican voters are increasingly wary of supporting him for another term in the White House in the 2024 presidential primaries.

Trump and many of his Republican allies in Congress have attacked the committee’s work as a politically motivated witch hunt. But Democrats, independents, and some Republicans have defended the commission’s work as necessary to protect democracy and ensure accountability for the riots.

“You follow the law, you follow the evidence and it’s very clear about that [Thompson and Cheney] Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator from Ohio, told NBC on Sunday. “I support what they’re doing. I think they showed courage.”

The committee’s work is coming to an end because Republicans are set to retake the House in early January, and their leadership has long opposed it.

A number of committee members, including Cheney, either lost their bids for re-election to the House of Representatives or decided to step down from Congress.

Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois, who is on the committee and did not seek another term in Congress, explained his own motives for filing a criminal referral against Trump with the Justice Department earlier this month.

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“The criminal referrals themselves aren’t necessarily something that would wake the Justice Department up to something they didn’t know about before, but I think it would be something important and symbolic that the commission could do,” Kinzinger told ABC. It would state “very clearly” that Congress believes “a crime has been committed.”

But some Republicans argue that moving forward with criminal referrals against Trump would not be necessary. “I think if they really want the Justice Department to do their job objectively, they shouldn’t be making referrals. Do you think the Justice Department doesn’t know what happened on January 6th? They’re doing their own investigation,” Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, told ABC. with an independent consultant.

“That’s the politics at play here with making the referrals. And I think it’s the politics that really hurt the issue of getting to the bottom of who was responsible for January 6th and making sure they take responsibility.”

Eileen Luria, the committee’s Democratic member who lost her seat in the midterms, relived the trauma of Jan. 6 in her final speech on the House floor last week when she defended the committee’s work.

“On that day, January 6, 2021, lives were lost, these hallowed halls were desecrated, and our democracy was tested,” she said.

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