WASHINGTON — A House committee recommended that Donald Trump be prosecuted for his role in the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, the first-ever such referral of a former president.
In the finale of a 17-month investigation, the committee voted unanimously Monday to refer Trump for prosecution by the Justice Department on four criminal offenses including insurrection, which Rep. Jamie Raskin said would disqualify him from holding office, if convicted.
The action adds to the legal and political troubles plaguing Trump’s 2024 reelection bid, which he announced barely a month ago. Another House committee is scheduled to meet Tuesday to consider publicly releasing six years of Trump’s tax returns that he has long fought to keep private. The Ways and Means Committee obtained the documents after a lengthy court battle.
In recent weeks, Trump’s company has been convicted of tax fraud, his dinner with a white supremacist provoked furious criticism and his support plummeted after disappointing Republican results in the midterm elections. Some polls show him trailing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the Republican nomination and President Joe Biden in a hypothetical 2024 general election rematch.
The House panel concluded in its final report that Trump was “the central cause” of last year’s Capitol insurrection as he sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to Biden. About 900 people have been charged with crimes for participating in that assault.
“Ours is not a system of justice where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ring leaders get a free pass,” Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said.
The committee said associates of Trump should also be considered for charges, without naming them during the final meeting. The summary the committee released mentions several people for playing prominent roles in the events, including Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, legal advisers John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, and Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark.
The committee’s referral doesn’t require the Justice Department to prosecute Trump and in fact has no formal legal impact. Yet it is a powerful statement to federal and state prosecutors as well as the broader public. The committee also recommended charges related to obstructing a congressional proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and conspiracy to make a false statement.
The referrals will be mailed this week to the Justice Department, said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and the committee’s chairman. A representative of the Justice Department declined to comment.
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the vice chair and one of the two Republicans on the nine-member panel, called Trump’s conduct “an utter moral failure and a dereliction of duty” that renders him “unfit for any office.”
Trump said in a radio interview with Dan Bongino on Monday afternoon that the Jan. 6 panel is “a kangaroo court” and “the people are not going to stand for it anymore.”
The committee released a 161-page summary of its findings and plans later this week to make public the remainder of its final report, laying out what its members said is a detailed case for Trump’s culpability for the mob attack. The panel has accumulated evidence including interviews with more than a thousand witnesses that it also plans to share with prosecutors and the public.
Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, another panel member, said the investigation uncovered evidence of attempts to influence witnesses. She cited an instance in which a witness, before testifying, was offered potential employment that would make her “financially very comfortable.” The offer from an entity apparently linked to Trump was withdrawn after her testimony was reported, she said.
“We believe these efforts may have been part of a strategy to prevent the committee from finding the truth,” Lofgren said.
The committee’s summary cited “multiple efforts” by Trump to contact witnesses.
The panel also asked the House’s internal ethics committee to consider sanctions against members of Congress who refused to comply with subpoenas to testify in the investigation. Republicans will gain control of the House in January, making that unlikely.
Among the congressional representatives the panel cited for refusing to testify is House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, the presumptive speaker of the House when the incoming GOP majority takes power. The others are Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, and Andy Biggs of Arizona.
Jay Ostrich, a spokesperson for Perry, called Monday’s action by the committee “more games from a petulant and soon-to-be defunct kangaroo court desperate for revenge and struggling to get out from under the weight of its own irrelevancy.”
Charles Burnham, a lawyer for Eastman, released a statement lamenting the failure of the committee to look more closely at questions of Capitol security, electoral reform and other matters. “Sadly, this opportunity has been squandered,” he said.
Congress is expected to vote this week to set a higher threshold for challenging presidential election results, a reform prompted by the Capitol assault. Negotiators on a year-end spending bill agreed to include the bipartisan overhaul of the Electoral Count Act on that must-pass legislation, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor.
Hearings the committee held over the spring and summer regularly dominated their television time slots, with riveting insider accounts punctuating a case against Trump and key associates. Several publishers plan to rush out custom editions of the committee report in anticipation of reader interest. The panel also plans online multimedia presentations to amplify the impact of its findings.
A conviction on an insurrection charge would complicate Trump’s reelection effort. Under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, anyone who has previously taken an oath to support the Constitution — which presidents and members of Congress must do — is barred from federal office if they engage in insurrection.
But it’s not clear exactly how that section of the Constitution would work in practice, especially in a nationwide presidential race. The Constitution doesn’t spell out a uniform process for pursuing disqualification. Recent challenges under the 14th Amendment to a candidate appearing on the ballot have unfolded on a state-by-state basis. Congress failed to act this year on proposed measures to create a standardized process intended to avoid legal chaos.
The insurrection disqualification is also a relatively untested area of the law, and any effort to keep Trump off the ballot is likely to trigger a fierce court fight.
No sitting or former president has ever been tried for a crime, though Ulysses Grant was arrested and fined $20 while president for speeding down a Washington street in his horse and buggy. President Gerald Ford preempted charges against Richard Nixon with a pardon following the Watergate scandal.
At the end of his presidential term, Bill Clinton agreed to a five-year suspension of his Arkansas law license and $25,000 fine in a deal with independent counsel Robert Ray not to bring criminal charges against him for lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
———
(With assistance from Zoe Tillman, Steven T. Dennis, Laura Davison, Mark Niquette and Chris Strohm.)
