US: The House panel investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol is considering recommending to the Justice Department that former President Donald Trump face an unprecedented criminal charge of insurrection as well as two other counts.
According to a person familiar with the matter who could not publicly discuss the private deliberations and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, the panel is considering recommending prosecutors pursue charges for obstructing an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States, in addition to insurrection.
The committee’s deliberations were still ongoing late Friday, and no decisions on which specific charges the committee would refer to the Justice Department had been made.
The panel will meet in public on Monday afternoon, after which any recommendations will be made public.
The committee was considering three charges
A second person familiar with the deliberations, who, like the first, was not allowed to publicly discuss the private deliberations, confirmed the committee was considering three charges. According to that person, the panel’s lawyers argued that those three criminal statutes were the strongest cases to make.
The decision to make referrals is not surprising. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the committee’s vice chair, has been hinting for months that the committee will send criminal referrals to the Justice Department based on the extensive evidence gathered by the nine-member panel since its formation in July 2021.
“You may not send an armed mob to the Capitol; you may not sit for 187 minutes and refuse to stop the attack while it’s underway. You may not send out a tweet that incites further violence,” Cheney told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in October. “So we’ve been very clear about a number of different criminal offences that are likely at issue here.”
The committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., detailed possible referrals last week, categorising them as criminal and ethics violations, legal misconduct, and campaign finance violations.
It would then be up to federal prosecutors to decide whether to prosecute any referrals. While the committee’s recommendations have no legal weight, they would increase political pressure on the Justice Department as it investigates Trump’s actions.
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The gravest offense in constitutional terms
“The gravest offense in constitutional terms is the attempt to overthrow a presidential election and bypass the constitutional order,” said committee member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., last week. “There are a slew of statutory offences that support the gravity and magnitude of that violent assault on America.”
Raskin, Cheney, and California Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren served on the subcommittee that drafted the referral recommendations and presented them to the larger group for consideration.
During its investigation, the committee recommended that several members of Trump’s inner circle be prosecuted for failing to comply with congressional subpoenas. One resulted in a conviction for Steve Bannon.
The session on Monday will also include a sneak peek at the committee’s final report, which is set to be released on Wednesday. The panel will vote on adopting the official record, effectively authorising the report’s public release.
The eight-chapter report will include hundreds of pages of findings about the attack and Trump’s actions and words, based on what the committee learned from more than 1,000 witnesses interviewed by the committee.
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