Panel is split on making criminal referral of Trump
» The leaders of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack have grown divided over whether to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department of former President Donald Trump, even though they have concluded that they have enough evidence to do so, people involved in the discussions said.
The debate centers on whether making a referral — a largely symbolic act — would backfire by politically tainting the Justice Department’s expanding investigation into the Jan. 6 assault and what led up to it.
Since the summer, a team of former federal prosecutors working for the committee has focused on documenting the attack and the preceding efforts by Trump and his allies to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election. The panel plans to issue a detailed report on its findings, but in recent months it has regularly signaled that it was also weighing a criminal referral that would pressure Attorney General Merrick Garland to open a criminal investigation into Trump.
Despite concluding that they have enough evidence to refer Trump for obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiring to defraud the American people, some on the committee are questioning whether there is any need to make a referral. The Justice Department appears to be ramping up a wide-ranging investigation, and making a referral could saddle a criminal case with further partisan baggage at a time when Trump is openly flirting with running again in 2024.
The committee’s vice chairwoman, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-wyo., said on CNN on Sunday that the committee had not made a final decision about making referrals and downplayed any divisions on the committee, but acknowledged there was significant evidence of criminality.
“I think that it is absolutely the case; it’s absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful. They did it anyway,” said Cheney.
The shift in committee leaders’ perspective on making a referral was prompted in part by a ruling two weeks ago by Judge David O. Carter of the U.S. District Court for Central California. Deciding a civil case in which the committee had sought access to more than 100 emails written by John C. Eastman, a lawyer who advised Trump on efforts to derail certification of the Electoral College outcome, Carter found that it was “more likely than not” that Trump and Eastman had committed federal crimes.
The ruling led some committee and staff members to argue that even though they felt they had amassed enough evidence to justify calling for a prosecution, the judge’s decision would carry far greater weight with Garland than any referral letter they could write, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.
The members and aides who were reluctant to support a referral contended that making one would create the appearance that Garland was investigating Trump at the behest of a Democratic Congress and that if the committee could avoid that perception it should, the people said.
Even if the final report does not include a specific referral letter to Garland, the findings would still provide federal prosecutors with the evidence the committee uncovered — including some that has not yet become public — that could be used as a road map for any prosecution, the people said.
“If you read his decision, I think it’s quite telling,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-calif., a member of the committee, said of Carter’s ruling. “He and we have reviewed a huge amount of documents, and he reached a conclusion that he outlined in very stark terms.”
Cheney portrayed any divisions as minor and said the panel would work collaboratively and reach a consensus agreement.
“I’m confident we will work to come to agreement,” she said.
Although staff members have been in discussions about a referral, and some have debated the matter publicly, the committee members have not sat down together to discuss whether to proceed with a referral, several lawmakers said.
Rep. Pete Aguilar, DCalif., said the committee was likely to hold off on making a final determination until investigators finished their work. He said the panel was “finishing up” its investigative phase and shifting to a more “public-facing” one in which the panel will present its findings.
“The members haven’t had those conversations,” Aguilar said of a meeting to discuss a potential referral. “Right now, we’re gathering the material that we need. As the investigative phase winds down, we’ll have more conversations about what the report looks like. But we’re not presupposing where that’s going to go before we get a little further with the interviews.”
Although the committee has the ability to subpoena testimony and documents and make referrals to the Justice Department for prosecutions, it has no criminal prosecution powers.
Cheney singled out Trump’s conduct at a public hearing in December, reading from the criminal code and laying out how she believed he had obstructed Congress. In early March, the committee in effect road-tested whether the evidence it had gathered could support a prosecution, laying out in a filing in the civil case before Carter its position that Trump and Eastman had obstructed Congress and defrauded the American public.
In validating the committee’s position, legal experts said, the judge made it difficult for the Justice Department to avoid an investigation. Garland has given no public indication of the department’s intentions other than to say that it will follow the facts and the law. But subpoenas issued by a federal grand jury indicate that prosecutors are gathering information about a wide array of issues, including about efforts to obstruct the election certification by people in the Trump White House and in Congress.
Investigators from the House committee and the Justice Department have not been sharing information, except to avoid conflicts around the scheduling of certain witnesses.
“We want them to move faster, but we respect their work,” Aguilar said, adding that the committee has a different goal than the Justice Department’s inquiry: to fully investigate what led to the riot, which injured more than 150 police officers, and take legislative steps to prevent a repeat.