- The seven Democrats and two Republicans on the January 6 committee unanimously voted to recommend criminal charges for Donald Trump
- It’s a largely symbolic move unless the Justice Department ultimately acts
- No other US president has been the subject of a criminal referral by Congress
The January 6 committee has announced the criminal referrals they are sending the Justice Department regarding Donald Trump on Monday.
The recommended charges were obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make a false statement and ‘inciting,’ ‘aiding’ or ‘assisting’ an insurrection.
Lawmakers made the stunning decision during the panel’s final public hearing before the select committee is dissolved at the end of this year.
No US president has been the subject of a criminal referral by Congress until now.
‘At the heart of our republic is the guarantee of the peaceful transfer of power,’ said Vice Chair Liz Cheney at the outset of the hearing. ‘Every president in our history has accepted this orderly transfer of authority except one.’
‘In addition to being unlawful as described in our report, this was an utter moral failure and a clear dereliction of duty,’ she said at another point.
The meeting is a culmination of more than a year’s investigative work and nine public hearings.
Lawmakers on the panel have heard from dozens of witnesses – mainly Republicans – and obtained thousands of pages’ worth of correspondences and other documents that paint a picture of Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Cheney said, ‘among the most shameful of this committee’s findings is that President Trump sat in the dining room by the Oval Office watching the Capitol riot on television.’
Throughout the public phase of their probe, the committee has sought to prove that the former president was well aware that he lost to Joe Biden when he was publicly promoting his election fraud claims – and that members of his team reminded him of that fact multiple times.
Additionally, they accused Trump of using his fraud theories to fundraise from his supporters, therefore knowingly misleading them.
And lawmakers say the Capitol riot was not a spontaneous outbreak of violence but rather, as Vice Chair Cheney said at one early hearing, Trump and his allies’ ‘last stand’ to try and upend a democratically held election.
The Justice Department is already probing the former president’s alleged plan to overturn the 2020 election.
An ongoing federal investigation into Trump and his allies’ efforts to upend Georgia’s electoral count recently heated up with the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith, a former Hague prosecutor who the ex-president has repeatedly attacked since taking on the new role.
