Jan. 6 committee votes to refer Trump to DOJ on multiple criminal charges

A video of former President Donald Trump is shown on a screen, as the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol holds its final meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, Monday, December 19. (

The Jan. 6 committee used its final public meeting Monday to summarize its 17-month investigation with a simple closing statement: All roads lead to Donald Trump.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

The committee refers Trump to the DOJ

For months, the committee went back-and-forth over whether it would refer Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. On Monday, the committee didn’t equivocate.

The committee referred Trump to DOJ on at least four criminal charges, while saying in its executive summary, released after the meeting, it had evidence of possible charges of conspiring to injure or impede an officer and seditious conspiracy.

In practice, the referral is effectively a symbolic measure. It does not require the Justice Department to act, and regardless, Attorney General Merrick Garland has already appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to take on two investigations related to Trump, including the Jan. 6 investigation.

But the formal criminal referrals and the unveiling of its report this week underscore how much the Jan. 6 committee dug up and revealed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the lead-up to Jan. 6. Now the ball is in the Justice Department’s court.

All roads lead to Trump

Committee members repeatedly pointed to Trump’s personal involvement in nearly every part of the broader plot to overturn the 2020 election and focused squarely on his role in the violence that unfolded on Jan. 6.

Monday’s presentation was a compelling closing salvo for the committee, which said Trump sought to break “the foundation of American democracy.” Members stressed that Trump knew the election was not stolen but continued to push baseless claims about widespread voter fraud in an effort to upend Joe Biden’s legitimate victory.

Visually reinforcing their argument

The committee relied once again on video — an effective and memorable tool the panel has used throughout its hearings with closed-door witness testimony and harrowing scenes from the violent attack on the Capitol, to make an its case against Trump.

The montage went step-by-step through Trump’s efforts to block his election loss, showed how his attacks upended the lives of election workers and played body-cam footage of officers attacked by rioters.

A bipartisan, if one-sided, endeavor

Though GOP lawmakers have called the committee partisan, the panel is, in fact, bipartisan.

Two Republicans who volunteered to join the committee: Rep. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. They both brought GOP staff members along with them who worked for the committee.

To be sure, Cheney and Kinzinger are outliers in their caucus because they are anti-Trump. And that is the core of Trump’s critiques of the committee — that it stacked with Trump haters. Still, even if they oppose Trump, Cheney and Kinzinger are still deeply conservative Republicans.

No matter what Trump and his allies say, Democrats will forever be able to accurately assert that the panel’s findings, conclusions, its final report and its criminal referrals are bipartisan.

Read more takeaways here

After the Jan. 6 committee’s final public session Monday, some people named in the summary of the final report, as well as some of those who were referred by the committee, are reacting to the conclusion to the nearly year and a half investigation.

The committee approved a criminal referral for three charges against former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department. The former president responded on Truth Social, saying that the committee’s actions would make “him stronger” and indicated that the referrals today were part of a larger attempt to stop him from running for President in 2024.

Trump’s base has had a history of galvanizing behind him when Trump is in legal peril, including when he Mar-a-Lago home was searched by the FBI. As Trump’s political support has seemingly waned in recent weeks, it is unclear that these criminal referrals will have the same effect.

The committee said it was also advancing criminal referrals for attorney John Eastman and “others” to the Justice Department for investigation and potential prosecution.

There is evidence to justify an Eastman referral to DOJ on obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States, the committee said Monday. Raskin said that the committee believed the conduct of others may also warrant Justice Department investigation and prosecution, but those referrals were not identified on Monday.

Eastman decried the committee’s “Stalinist” tactics said he had not yet received a subpoena in the DOJ criminal probe now being led by Special Counsel Jack Smith. 

He said that he had a “whole lot of information” to defend himself if federal prosecutors decided to bring a case against him. He also said that a federal judge “got it wrong” when the judge concluded that a handful of Eastman’s emails showed evidence of a crime.

Other referrals: The House select committee is referring four members of Congress to the House’s Ethics Committee after those members did not comply with the subpoenas from the panel.

An executive summary released after the meeting identifies the four Republicans as GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

Russell Dye, a spokesperson for Rep. Jim Jordan, called the referral a “partisan and political stunt” by the committee. In a statement, he claimed the panel “knowingly altered evidence, blocked minority representation on a Committee for the first time in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives, and failed to respond to Mr. Jordan’s numerous letters and concerns surrounding the politicization and legitimacy of the Committee’s work.”

CNN has also reached out to the other lawmakers.

Others named in the summary: In addition, several others are named as being participants in the conspiracies the committee is linking to Trump, including then-DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark and Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, as well as Trump-tied lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Rudy Giuliani.

Ted Goodman, communications and political advisor to Rudy Giuliani, a former lawyer for Donald Trump and former mayor of New York City, said in a statement: “Mayor Rudy Giuliani wasn’t drinking election night and we have multiple in-person witnesses on the record to back this up. Anyone saying otherwise is either mistaken or shamefully lying about Mayor Giuliani — an honest, good American who has dedicated his life to serving others and doing the right thing.” 

The House select committee said in an executive summary of its final report that on election night in 2020, “the only advisor present who supported President Trump’s inclination to declare victory was Rudolph Giuliani, who appeared to be inebriated,” citing testimony the panel received.

Senate Republicans are divided over the Jan. 6 investigation — and also over Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell’s comments saying the “entire nation” blames former President Donald Trump for the attack.

Asked if he agrees, Sen. Rick Scott said, “I haven’t seen a poll like that.”

While some like Sen. Mitt Romney agreed with McConnell, others refused to go that far.

Sen. John Cornyn, a member of McConnell’s leadership team, said the investigation was not credible. Asked if he agreed with McConnell’s statement, Cornyn wouldn’t say, but added, “I don’t dispute that people saw it with their own eyes.”

Sen. Josh Hawley declined to comment on McConnell and dismissed the committee’s referral to the Justice Department.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville also answered “no” when asked if he agreed with McConnell, adding of the entire investigation that “this committee is self-serving. We’ve got a lot more problems than rehashing this whole thing.”

“There’s a lot of people responsible,” Tuberville said.

Sen. Kevin Cramer said, “I don’t know who he said was responsible but to me, the people that were responsible for January 6 were the people that illegally came into the building, people that stormed over barriers and broke through windows and doors and illegally trespassed in the United States Capitol.”

“I think it’s a cop out to blame somebody other than the actual perpetrators of crimes, generally. So I don’t like to take criminals off the hook too easily,” Cramer added.

House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol conducts its final meeting in the Cannon House Office Building on Monday, December. 19.

The end is near — at least for the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The panel held its final public session Monday where it voted on its final report and approved a criminal referral for several charges against former President Donald Trump.

So here’s what happens next: Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson said the full report will come out Wednesday. This will be a historical document that will be studied for generations — never before has a sitting president tried to steal a second term.

Additional “transcripts and documents” will be released before the end of the year, Thompson said.

The sheer volume of this material can’t be overstated. The panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, likely generating tens of thousands of pages of transcripts. Many of these interviews were filmed, which means the panel has hundreds of hours of footage that it might release very soon.

These upcoming releases will provide fodder to Trump’s critics. But it will also grant a key demand from some of Trump’s allies — that the panel disclose the full context of its interviews. Up until this point, the panel has been very selective about which snippets of witness interviews got played at public hearings.

The current Congress ends on January 3, 2023, and that’s when the committee will cease to exist. But the Justice Department investigation, overseen by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by US Attorney General Merrick Garland, continues. 

Of the committee’s nine members, four won’t be returning to Congress. Besides Republican vice-chair Rep. Liz Cheney and Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida is retiring, and Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia was one of the handful of House Democratic incumbents who lost their seats in the 2022 midterms last month.

For months, the Jan. 6 committee went back-and-forth over whether it would refer former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. On Monday, the committee didn’t equivocate.

The committee referred Trump to the DOJ on at least four criminal charges, including:

The panel said in its executive summary that it had evidence of possible charges of conspiring to injure or impede an officer and seditious conspiracy.

So what is a criminal referral? A referral represents a recommendation that the Justice Department investigate and look at charging the individuals in question. The House committee’s final report – to be released Wednesday – will provide justification from the panel’s investigation for recommending the charges.

In practice, the referral is effectively a symbolic measure. It does not require the Justice Department to act, and regardless, Attorney General Merrick Garland has already appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to take on two investigations related to Trump, including the Jan. 6 investigation.

But the formal criminal referrals and the unveiling of its report this week underscore how much the Jan. 6 committee dug up and revealed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the lead-up to Jan. 6. Now the ball is in the Justice Department’s court.

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said during Monday’s meeting that he has “every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a road map to justice, and that the agencies and institutions responsible for ensuring justice under the law will use the information we’ve provided to aid in their work.”

After the panel’s meeting, Thompson told CNN that the evidence that supports the panel’s decision to refer Trump to the DOJ is “clear,” adding that he is “convinced” that the department will ultimately charge Trump.

CNN’s Tierney Sneed contributed reporting to this post.

Raskintalks to reporters on Monday, December 19.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, who serves on the subcommittee of the Jan. 6 select committee responsible for presenting criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, laid out how panel members arrived at the decisions presented during Monday’s final public session.

Asked about process offenses, such as witness tampering or perjury, Raskin said “as evidence is assembled about that, I hope that those will be charged as well. You cannot suborn perjury, you cannot obstruct justice, you cannot interfere with a congressional proceeding.” However, Raskin did not specify who these potential charges related to in the panel’s investigation. 

In terms of unanswered questions left by the committee, Raskin was asked if the panel ever solved the situation with the pipe bombs on Jan. 6 and said, “I don’t believe there have been any updates since we first looked int to. Those are unsolved crimes.”

House select committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney arrives for the final hearing on Capitol Hill on Monday, December 19.

Audio of former President Donald Trump plays during the House select committee session on December 19.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the House select committee, speaks during the last meeting on Monday.

From second left to right, former US Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone and USCP Officer Harry Dunn listen to the final public session of the House select committee.

The US Capitol is seen on Monday, December 19.

Check out photos from the last Jan. 6 hearings here.

Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin speak to reporters as they leave the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol final meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on Monday, December 19.

Jan. 6 committee members, Reps. Jamie Raskin and Adam Schiff, explained that more associates of former President Donald Trump were not directly referred to the Department of Justice because the committee wanted to focus on those with “abundant evidence” against them.

Raskin noted that the DOJ will receive the full report and can decide if anyone else discussed merits further investigation.

“We wanted to proceed in such a way that we could all feel certain that these were people where evidence exists that they engaged in criminal offenses against our country,” he added.

Schiff said, “The long and the short of it is we possess evidence that up until this release, the Justice Department may not have, they possess evidence that we don’t have, and the cumulative impact of all that evidence will hopefully lead to justice for those that have broken the law here.”

Raskin promised that they would cooperate with the Justice Department “quickly,” while Schiff added that the committee expects evidence will start to be made available to both the DOJ and the public starting Wednesday.

Asked to explain why those four House Republicans were referred to House Ethics in particular, Schiff pointed out that these four failed to comply with a congressional subpoena, which is easier to prove.

The House select committee, including chair Rep. Bennie Thompson, center, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, hold their final meeting on Monday.

After extensive investigation, the House select committee investigating Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol held its final public meeting Monday where they voted on their final report and approved a series of criminal referrals — including against former President Donald Trump and others in his orbit.

The final report is expected to be released publicly Wednesday.

Here are the key things that happened at the committee’s last public session:

From left to right, former US Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone and USCP Officer Harry Dunn listen to the final public session of the House select committee.

As the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 riot held its last public meeting, the room was packed.

Law enforcement officers who testified at the panel’s first public hearing last July about the violence they experienced defending the US Capitol on Jan. 6 sat in the front row, as they have for every public event the committee has had.

Those officers include: US Capitol Police (USCP) officer Harry Dunn, former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, former USCP Sgt. Aquilino Gonell and Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges.

Fanone sat in the audience as the panel replayed his testimony about being attacked as the riot unfolded.

A number of committee staff and investigators — and even former GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock, who has publicly supported the panel’s work — were in the audience as well. 

The meeting took place in the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Caucus Room which was recently renamed to honor House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who stepping down as speaker at the end of the this Congress.

In previous hearings, it was typical to see a committee staffer sitting at the dais with the members. But for today’s meeting, it was just the nine committee members at the dais, each taking turns speaking.

The White House said the Jan. 6 committee has been doing “important bipartisan work,” but declined to offer any new response after the committee held its final public meeting on Monday. 

Jean-Pierre said the committee had “been doing important bipartisan work to get to the truth of what happened on that very day so we can make sure that that doesn’t happen again.” 

Pressed for a response on referrals to the House Ethics Committee for four Republican members of Congress, Jean-Pierre declined to give a direct response from the White House.

“You would have to ask those, those very Republicans… to speak for their own actions here and have them explain themselves,” she said.

Former President Donald Trump arrives on stage to announce his plans to run for president during an event at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 15.

Jan. 6 committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson said the evidence that supports the panel’s decision to refer former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department for several criminal charges is “clear,” adding that he is “convinced” that the DOJ will ultimately charge Trump.

“The committee looked at it long and hard, and from my vantage point, we couldn’t do anything except make the referral,” Thompson told CNN after Monday’s meeting, acknowledging the unprecedented nature of the referral.

“It was clear in the evaluation of the evidence uncovered by our committee that those actions taken by the president… former President Trump, clearly created a problem for this country,” he added.

The committee also voted to approve its final report which will be released to the public Wednesday. That report will contain most of the evidence from the 17-month long investigation — including full transcripts from more than 1,000 interviews.

“We think it’s important for the Justice Department to look at that body of information that we put together,” he said.

Watch:

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01:20 • Source: CNN

A video showing Kellyanne Conway is played during the House select committee meeting on Monday.

Trump “minimized the seriousness of the attack” in the days following the riot, Jan. 6 committee member Rep. Elaine Luria said, specifically citing testimony that Trump’s former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway gave to the committee. 

Asked to describe her conversation with Trump the day after the riot, Conway, said she didn’t think it was very long. “I don’t think it was very long. I just said that was just a terrible day.” 

Trump, Conway said, responded to her saying, “These people are upset. They’re very upset.”  

CNN previously reported that Trump similarly described rioters as being “upset” during a heated phone call he had with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy while the insurrection was underway, claiming the rioters cared more about the election results than the California Republican did. 

“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump said, according to lawmakers who were briefed on the call afterward by McCarthy. 

Trump’s comment set off what GOP lawmakers familiar with the call described as a shouting match between the two men. A furious McCarthy told Trump the rioters were breaking into his office through the windows, and asked, “Who the f–k do you think you are talking to?” according to a Republican lawmaker familiar with the call. 

The Jan. 6 committee brought some focus on the consequences of former President Donald Trump’s lies for “regular people,” CNN’s Audie Cornish said after the committee’s final public meeting, including the “election workers who suffered because they were caught up in a vortex of lies and the conspiracy theories.”

“Even the insurrectionists who have gone to say, ‘I went because the president told me to go,’” she added.

“I think it was valuable for the committee to acknowledge and underscore that in its final meeting,” Cornish added.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol has concluded that former President Donald Trump was ultimately responsible for the insurrection, laying out for the public and the Justice Department a trove of evidence for why he should be prosecuted for multiple crimes.

The summary describes in extensive detail how Trump tried to overpower, pressure and cajole anyone who wasn’t willing to help him overturn his election defeat — while knowing that many of his schemes were unlawful. His relentless arm-twisting included election administrators in key states, senior Justice Department leaders, state lawmakers, and others. The report even suggests possible witness tampering with the committee’s investigation.

The committee repeatedly uses forceful language to describe Trump’s intent: that he “purposely disseminated false allegations of fraud” in order to aid his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and to successfully solicit about $250 million in political contributions. “These false claims provoked his supporters to violence on January 6th.”

The full report, based on 1,000-plus interviews, documents collected including emails, texts, phone records and a year and a half of investigation by the nine-member bipartisan committee, will be released Wednesday, along with along with transcripts and other materials collected in the investigation.

Here are some key things from the report summary:

Committee referring Trump and others to DOJ: The House committee lays out a number of criminal statutes it believes were violated in the plots to stave off Trump’s defeat and says there’s evidence for criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Trump, Trump attorney John Eastman and “others.”

The report summary says there’s evidence to pursue Trump on multiple crimes, including obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make false statements, assisting or aiding an insurrection, conspiring to injure or impede an officer and seditious conspiracy.

Trump’s false victory was “premeditated”: The committee outlines 17 findings from its investigation that underpin its reasoning for criminal referrals, including that Trump knew the fraud allegations he was pushing were false and continued to amplify them anyway.

Several members of Congress being referred to House Ethics Committee: The select committee is referring several Republican lawmakers who refused to cooperate with the investigation to the House Ethics Committee.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, as well as Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona, could all face possible sanctions for their refusal to comply with committee subpoenas.

The Jan. 6 committee voted to approve its final report and criminal referrals against former President Donald Trump Monday.

While the full report won’t be available to the public until Wednesday, the panel released an executive summary following its meeting.

The summary describes in extensive detail how Trump tried to overpower, pressure and cajole anyone who wasn’t willing to help him overturn his election defeat – while knowing that many of his schemes were unlawful. 

Read the executive summary here:

The House select committee is referring four members of Congress to the House’s Ethics Committee after those members did not comply with the subpoenas from the panel.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, who announced the referrals at Monday’s public meeting, said they were being referred for “appropriate sanction by the House Ethics Committee for failure to comply with lawful subpoenas.” 

An executive summary released after the meeting identifies the four Republicans as: GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

CNN has reached out to all four GOP members who were referred to House Ethics for defying the committee’s subpoenas.

“This is just another partisan and political stunt made by a Select Committee that knowingly altered evidence, blocked minority representation on a Committee for the first time in the history of the US House of Representatives, and failed to respond to Mr. Jordan’s numerous letters and concerns surrounding the politicization and legitimacy of the Committee’s work,” Russell Dye, spokesperson for Rep. Jim Jordan, told CNN.

The House Jan. 6 committee voted Monday to approve its historic final committee report and refer former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department on multiple criminal charges for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. 

The committee voted unanimously at the end of its final public meeting Monday to adopt the report and criminal referrals for Trump and others. The final report won’t be released publicly until Wednesday.

The committee referred Trump to the Justice Department for obstructing an official proceeding, defrauding the US, making false statements and giving aid or comfort to an insurrection, the panel said Monday.

The committee said at Monday’s hearing that there is sufficient evidence to refer Trump on those four potential crimes.

The committee said it was also advancing criminal referrals for attorney John Eastman and “others” to the Justice Department for investigation and potential prosecution.

There is evidence to justify an Eastman referral to DOJ on obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States, the committee said Monday. Raskin said that the committee believed the conduct of others may also warrant Justice Department investigation and prosecution, but those referrals were not identified on Monday.

“Our report describes in detail the actions of numerous co-conspirators who agreed with, and participated in, Trump’s plan to impair, obstruct and defeat the certification of President Biden’s electoral victory,” Raskin said.

“That said, the subcommittee does not attempt to determine all of the potential participants in this conspiracy, as our understanding of the role of many individuals may be incomplete even today because they refused to answer our questions. We trust that the Department of Justice will be able to form a more complete picture through its investigation.”

Trump supporters participate in a rally in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021.

In the lead up to Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump ignored warnings from advisors about the potential for violence and rejected any suggestion that he should explicitly tell supporters to be peaceful, Rep. Stephanie Murphy said Monday. 

Murphy pointed to a text message exchange provided to the committee by Hope Hicks, Trump’s former communications director. In the exchange, Hicks and then White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley discussed getting Trump to tweet out a message to his supporters. Gidley texted Hicks that Trump “really should tweet something about Being NON-violent.”  

Hicks responded that she had already “suggested it several times” without success. 

“Mr. Herschmann said that he had made the same recommendation directly to the President and that he had refused,” Hicks said in her interview with the committee, a video of which was played Monday. 

Despite his staff’s warnings, Murphy said, Trump took to the stage on Jan. 6, 2021, and encouraged his supporters to “fight like hell,” and sent them marching to the Capitol building. 

The House Select Committee announced at Monday’s meeting it was recommending criminal referrals to the Justice Department as part of its investigation into Jan. 6.

“Ours is not a system of justice where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass,” said Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat who sits on the committee.

The committee chose to advance referrals because of “where the gravity of the specific offense, the severity of its actual harm, and the centrality of the offender to the overall design of the unlawful scheme to overthrow the election, compel us to speak,” he added. 

As a starting point, the committee relied on opinions issued by a federal judge in California, who determined emails to and from Trump attorney John Eastman showed evidence of a crime. That legal ruling allowed the committee to pierce the privileges that typically would have shielded them from view. 

“The judge concluded that both former President Donald Trump and John Eastman likely violated two federal criminal statutes,” Raskin said. 

Watch:

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08:42 • Source: CNN