CNN
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The House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6, 2021 is expected to announce that it will refer at least three criminal charges against former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department, including insurrection, obstruction of official process and conspiracy to to defraud the federal government.
The committee’s final recommendations could include proposed additional charges for Trump, the source said. The recommendations for dismissal will be presented at a committee meeting on Monday and the final report will provide a rationale for the panel’s investigation to recommend the charges.
The impact the House referrals might have remains unclear, as the Justice Department’s special counsel investigation is already examining Trump in his in-depth Jan. 6 investigation. But in addition to criminal referrals, committee chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters the panel could issue five to six other categories of referrals, such as ethics referrals to the House Ethics Committee, disciplinary referrals to the bar and campaign finance credentials.
Load recommendations under study of obstruction of due process and conspiracy to defraud the federal government are consistent with allegations the select committee made against Trump and his election attorney John Eastman in a previous legal proceeding to obtain Eastman’s emails. A judge agreed with the House, finding she could access Eastman’s emails about her 2020 campaign work for Trump because the couple likely planned to defraud the United States and engage in a conspiracy to obstruct Congress, according to this legal proceeding.
The Guardian was the first to report on the committee’s review of the charges.
Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, criticized the committee in a statement as a “kangaroo court” that held “show trials by Never Trump supporters who are a stain on the history of this country.”
Representative Zoe Lofgren, a member of the panel, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday that the panel had “been very careful in crafting these recommendations and tying them to the facts that we uncovered.”
“We spent an awful lot of time not just on what the code sections and the outcome recommendation are, but on the facts – and I think that’s really important when we’re discussing what we’re going to do and what we’ll have a vote on it, that people understand the facts behind the conclusions we are coming to,” the California Democrat said on “The Lead.”
The Justice Department has largely focused on criminal statutes related to violence, obstruction of congressional proceedings, and in some limited cases seditious conspiracy, when indicting defendants in connection with the attack on the US Capitol.
The committee will hold its final public meeting on Monday, and the panel’s full report will be released on Wednesday, according to Thompson. The Mississippi Democrat said the panel would approve its final report on Monday and make announcements about criminal referrals to the Justice Department, but the public won’t see the final report until two days later.
CNN previously reported that the panel also assessed criminal removals for a number of Trump’s closest allies, including Eastman, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Department of Justice official Justice Jeffrey Clark and former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, according to multiple sources.
Another source warned at the time that while the names were under consideration, there were still discussions to be had before the names were finalized.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to reflect that The Guardian first reported on the review of the charges.
