WASHINGTON — A House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection will recommend criminal prosecution for people, possibly including former President Donald Trump, over efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election outcome.
Committee Chair Bennie Thompson told reporters Tuesday that the panel’s probe, one of the most politically sensitive in decades, was still working out details, but that it would recommend charges be brought. He declined to identify the charges or prosecution targets the panel is considering for criminal referrals.
“We have not made a decision as to who, but we have made decisions that criminal referrals will happen,” Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said without adding details.
The Justice Department is not obligated to follow recommendations of the committee, which spent months on the investigation, but it could add political pressure to the agency and the special counsel Attorney General Merrick Garland has named to oversee the case. Myron Marlin, a Justice Department spokesman, declined to comment.
The panel, which held a series of televised hearings in the summer, is rushing to complete its work before its term expires at the end of the year and Republicans take over control of the House. Thompson has said he expects the committee to issue a final report before Christmas, and to decide on criminal referrals by the end of this week. The panel was set to meet Tuesday.
Throughout the committee’s proceedings, members have made clear they hold Trump responsible for inciting the attack on the Capitol in an effort to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.
Witnesses who have been interviewed by the panel include presidential staff and lawyers as well as law enforcement officers and others who testified to what was going on in the White House as hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop the U.S. House from certifying the 2020 election.
The charges may include perjury, Thompson said, also without providing any details. “Well, that’s part of the discussion. Yeah,” he said. Among other potential charges are criminal contempt of Congress, obstruction of justice, obstruction of an official government proceeding and conspiracy.
“The congressional referral does not have a technical legal effect,” said Ed O’Callaghan, a former senior Justice Department official and now a partner at WilmerHale. “But it adds another element of public scrutiny to an already highly scrutinized ongoing DoJ investigation.”
Garland last month appointed a special prosecutor, John L. “Jack” Smith, to oversee investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — including any role Trump may have played — as well as the former president’s handling of classified White House records after he left office.
Also on Tuesday, law enforcement members who battled the rioters were honored with the Congressional Gold Medal.
A jury last week convicted two leaders of the right-wing Oath Keepers group of seditious conspiracy, along with three other members on lesser charges. This week prosecutors will begin proceedings against four lower-level defendants tied to the organization.
A third trial is scheduled to start later this month against members of another right-wing group, the Proud Boys.
More than 900 people have been arrested for taking part in the assault. Of those, more than half have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial.
