May 2, 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — A House panel made up of seven Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans urged the Justice Department on Monday to bring criminal charges against the former president and his allies, wrapping up its investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol protests.
The panel released a lengthy summary of its final report in which they allege Republican Donald Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the election.
The charges recommended by the committee are conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to make a false statement and aiding an insurrection.
A criminal referral is mostly symbolic. The Justice Department, led by an attorney general appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, ultimately decides whether to prosecute Trump or others.
Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said the criminal justice system can provide accountability, adding, “We have every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a roadmap to justice.”
Thompson said Trump “broke the faith” that people have when they cast ballots in a democracy. “He lost the 2020 election and knew it," Thompson said. “But he chose to try to stay in office through a multi-part scheme to overturn the results and block the transfer of power."
Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s Republican vice chairwoman, said in opening remarks that every president in American history has defended the orderly transfer of power, “except one.
While a so-called criminal referral has no real legal standing, it applies political pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith to prosecute.
The panel was formed in the summer of 2021 after Senate Republicans blocked the formation of what would have been a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the insurrection. When that effort failed, the Democratic-controlled House formed an investigative committee of its own.
As the committee was getting started, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California, a Trump ally, decided not to participate after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected some of his appointments. That left an opening for two anti-Trump Republicans in the House — Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — to join seven Democrats, launching an unusually unified panel in the divided Congress.
“These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me. It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger," Trump said in a statement posted on his social network, condemning the criminal referral as “a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party.”
Lawmakers on the panel have openly pressured Garland to investigate Trump’s actions, and last month he appointed a special counsel, Smith, to oversee two probes related to Trump, including those related to the insurrection and the presence of classified documents at Trump's Florida estate.
