January 6 Committee Recommends Four Criminal Charges Against Trump

Topline

The January 6 House Committee made four criminal referrals against former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department on Monday in its final hearing culminating its 18-month-long investigation into Trump’s efforts to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election and the Capitol riots the committee alleges he incited.

Members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the US Capitol depart … [+] following its last public hearing in the Canon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on December 19, 2022. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

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Key Facts

The committee said it has collected sufficient evidence to warrant charges against Trump, and others, for obstruction of an official proceeding of the United States government, conspiring to defraud the U.S., making false statements to the federal government and inciting or engaging in an insurrection.

The committee referred five of Trump’s confidants—former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro to the DOJ for criminal investigations.

The committee also referred Republican Reps. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Scott Perry (Penn.) to the House Ethics Committee for refusing to comply with subpoenas issued as part of the committee’s investigation.

The referrals hold no legal weight, and it will be up to the Justice Department and House Ethics Committee whether to take on committee’s recommendations.

The committee on Monday authorized the release of a 154-page summary on its findings that detail its reasoning for the referrals and lay out findings that show Trump “purposely disseminated false allegations of fraud” that led his supporters to storm the Capitol, despite testimony from many in his inner circle who said they openly disagreed with Trump’s claims.

Crucial Quote

“If that faith [in our election system] is broken, so is our democracy,” Committee Chair Bennie Thompson said during Monday’s hearing. “Donald Trump broke that faith, he lost the 2020 election and knew it, but he chose to try to stay in office through a multi-part scheme to overturn the results and block the transfer of power. In the end, he summoned a mob to Washington and knowing they were armed and angry, pointed them to the Capitol and told them to fight like hell.”

Tangent

The committee’s summary report alleges Clark, working with former DOJ official Kenneth Klukowski, helped draft a letter to state legislators in swing states warning them that the Justice Department had identified irregularities that may have affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, a claim the committee called “affirmatively untrue.” Eastman, the committee alleges, helped Trump devise a plan for former Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the electoral votes, despite knowing such actions are illegal. In laying out its evidence against Giuliani, the committee noted he led multiple failed election fraud lawsuits and was the only Trump advisor who agreed with Trump’s decision to prematurely declare victory on election night. Chesebro, the report says, “was a central player in the scheme to submit fake electors to Congress and the National Archives,” referring to Trump’s plan to create slates of fake electors in states he had lost. Meadows, who played a primary role in both the letter Clark drafted and the fake electors scheme, according to the committee, also appeared to intentionally lie in his 2021 book The Chief’s Chief, in which he claimed Trump did not want to travel to the Capitol on January 6, contradicting testimony from multiple other witnesses, the report says.

Key Background

The nine-member panel’s final hearing on Monday began with a video laying out key parts of its sprawling investigation, which included interviews with more than 1,000 witnesses—–from White House staffers to Trump’s closest confidants. Among the most revealing testimonies was that of former Meadows aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, who provided vivid detail of Trump’s anger surrounding the events of January 6 and his allies’ failed attempts to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election. In one instance Hutchinson described, Trump shattered a plate in the White House dining room after former Attorney General William Barr said publicly there was no evidence of voter fraud. And on January 6, 2021, Trump was so angry that the secret service would not allow him to go to the Capitol, he physically lunged at his driver, Hutchinson said in her public testimony in June, citing a conversation she had with former US Secret Service Director Tony Ornato. Ornato has met with the committee, but the contents of his conversation have not been revealed. Barr also gave an explosive video testimony in which he recalled telling Trump his election fraud claims were “bulls—t.” In other notable video testimony, Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, said she agreed with Barr’s assessment. Meadows refused to testify, but turned over thousands of text messages to the committee that show how Trump’s allies, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, urged him to find a way to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Contra

Pence, in a Fox News interview on Monday, said he did not believe the DOJ should charge Trump with a criminal offense for his role in the January 6 insurrection. “As I wrote in my book, I think the president’s actions and words on January 6th were reckless. But I don’t know that it is criminal to take bad advice from lawyers. And so I hope the Justice Department is careful,” he said. Pence, who is considering a run for president in 2024, has become increasingly vocal in criticizing Trump. He said previously that Trump’s actions on January 6 endangered him and his family and he recently rebuked his former boss for saying parts of the constitution should be revoked because they did not facilitate his re-election in 2020.

What To Watch For

The committee is expected to issue a final report later this week detailing the results of its investigation over eight chapters spanning more than 1,000 pages, according to multiple reports. In it, the committee will reportedly outline Trump’s alleged efforts to sow distrust among voters about the election process, his schemes to pressure federal and state officials to invalidate the results and his role in inciting the violence that played out at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The committee is likely to be dissolved next year under a Republican majority in the House, and GOP members have expressed plans to release their own report that challenges the January 6 Committee’s findings, Axios reported.