The bipartisan House committee investigating the Capitol riots of January 6, 2021, unanimously voted Monday to recommend that former President Donald Trump be charged with four crimes.
The U.S. House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 riots has officially recommended that former President Donald Trump face four criminal charges, added conspiracy to defraud the government also inciting an insurgency.
According to Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who said Trump “wanted to ride in like Mussolini on the shoulders of the mob,” the committee voted to refer the 75-year-old former president to the Department of Justice for obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government, and inciting an insurgency.
Raskin also stated that Trump’s attorney, John Eastman, would be referred to the committee for allegedly obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring to defraud the government.
The committee will also refer four members of Congress to the House Ethics Committee for refusing to comply with subpoenas, according to a preview of the committee’s final report: Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, and Andy Biggs are members of the House Republican leadership.
Eastman, a former Chapman University professor, has described himself as Trump’s attorney, assisting the then-president in his efforts to demonstrate that the 2020 election was “stolen.”
According to the filing, Eastman has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to committee questions and has attempted to “conceal a range of relevant documents behind claim of attorney-client privilege and work-product protection.”
Because the criminal referrals have no official legal weight, they are largely symbolic — and come just weeks before Republicans take control of the House, effectively ending the committee’s work.
The Justice Department will now decide whether or not to charge the former president or Eastman.
The referrals come to like the Justice Department is already investigating the events of January 6, and has been hearing testimony in a criminal investigation into the riots for months.
According to New York Times reporting, recent testimony by those close to former Vice President Mike Pence indicates that the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into January 6 is intensifying.
The hearings, which began airing publicly in June, have revealed new details about the events leading up to the attacks and how Trump and his allies reacted.
