The House Jan. 6 committee urged the Justice Department on Monday to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump for the violent 2021 Capitol insurrection, calling for accountability for th📖e former president 🐽and “a time of reflection and reckoning.”
After one of the most exhaustive and aggressive congressional probes in memory, the panel's seven Democrats and two Republicans are recommending criminal charges against Trump and associates who helped him launch a wide-ranging pressure campaign to try to overturn his 2020 election loss. The panel also released a lengthy summary of its final re🧸poꦉrt, with findings that Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to thwart the will of voters.
At a final meeting Monday, the committee alleged violations of four criminal statut♑es by Trump, in both the run-up to the riot and during the insurrection itself, as it recommended the former president for prosecution to the Justice Department. Among the charges they recommend for prosecution is aiding an insurrection — an effort to hold him directly accountable for his supporters who stormed the Capitol that day.
The committee also voted to refer conservative lawyer John Eastman, who devised dubious legal maneuvers aimed at keဣeping Trump in power, for prosecution on two of the same statutes as Trump: conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstructing an official proceeding.
While a c🀅riminal referral is mostly symbolic, with the Justice Department ultimately deciding whether to prosecute Trump o🍨r others, it is a decisive end to a probe that had an almost singular focus from the start.
Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Trump✱ “broke the faith” that people have when they cast ballots in a democracy and that the criminal referrals ꩵcould provide a “roadmap to justice" by using the committee's work.
“I believe nearly two y⛎ears later, this is still a time of reflection and reckoning,” Thompson said. “If we are to survive as a nation of laws and democracy, ♛this can never happen again.”
Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the panelꦓ's Republican vice chairwoman, said in her opening remarks that every president in American history has defended the orderly transfer of power, “except one.”
The committee also voted 9-0 to approve its final report, which will include findings, interview transcripts and legislative recommendations. The full report is expected to be released on🍸 Wednesday.
The report's 154-page summary, made public as the hearing ended, found that Trump engaged in a “multi-part ꩲconspiracy” to overturn the election. While the majority of the report's main findings are not new, it altogether represents one of the most damning portraits of an American president in recent history, laying out in great detail Trump's broad effort to overturn his own defeat and what the lawmakers say is his direct responsibility for the insurrection of his supporters.
The panel, which will dissolve on Jan. 3 with the new Republican-led House, has conducted more than 1,000 inte🅷rviews, held 10 well-watched public hearings and collected more than a million documents since it launched in July 2021. As it has gathered the massive trove of evidence, the members have become emboldened in declaring that Trump, a Republican, is to blame for the violent attack on the Capitol by his supporters almost two years ago.
After beaꦯting their way past police, injuring many of them, the Jan. 6 rioters stormed the Capitol and﷽ interrupted the certification of Biden's presidential election win, echoing Trump's lies about widespread election fraud and sending lawmakers and others running for their lives.
The attack came after weeks of Trump's efforts to overturn his defeat — a campaign that was extensively detailed by the committee in its multiple public hearings, and laid out again by lawmakers on the panel at Monday's meeting. Many of Trump's former aides testified about his unprecedented pressure on states,꧙ on federal officials and Pence to object to Biden's win. The committee has als𒉰o described in great detail how Trump riled up the crowd at a rally that morning and then did little to stop his supporters for several hours as he watched the violence unfold on television.
The panel aired some new evidence at the meeting, including a recent interview with longtime Trump aide Hope Hicks. Describing a conversation she had with Trump around that time, she said he told her that no one would care abouꦍt his legacy if he lost the election.
Hicks told the committee that Trump told her✤, “The ꦛonly thing that matters is winning."
Trum💫p's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the former🌳 president slammed members of the committee Sunday as “thugs and scoundrels” as he has continued to falsely dispute his 2020 loss.
While a so-called crimina🐟l referral has no real legal standi♑ng, it is a forceful statement by the committee and adds to political pressure already on Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith, who is conducting an investigation into Jan. 6 and Trump's actions.
