Investigating the 2021 Insurrection with Subcommittees. Report of a View from the House Select Committee on Criminal Referrals
The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection is considering criminal referrals for at least four individuals in addition to former President Donald Trump, multiple sources told CNN.
The committee has not officially decided whom to refer to the Justice Department for prosecution and for what offenses, sources said. The four individuals who are under consideration, and their names have not been previously reported, give a window into the deliberations.
While the referrals would be symbolic in nature, as the Justice Department has already undertaken a lengthy investigation into the US Capitol attack and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the committee members said the move serves as a way to document their views for the record.
Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, told reporters Friday he expected to reach a decision on criminal referrals at Sunday’s virtual meeting. But Schiff reiterated on Sunday that the committee will wait to announce its decision until December 21, when it plans to present the rest of its report.
“I think the more we looked at the body of evidence that we had collected, we just felt that while we’re not in the business of investigating people for criminal activities, we just couldn’t overlook some of them.”
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who leads the January 6 subcommittee tasked with presenting recommendations on criminal referrals to the full committee, said Thursday, “I think anyone who engages in criminal actions needs to be held accountable for them. And we are going to spell that out.”
The gravest offense in constitutional terms is the attempt to overthrow a presidential election. There are a bunch of statutory offenses that support the gravity and magnitude of that violent assault on America.
The Raskin Subcommittee on the Subcommission on Contempt of Congress Referred to the Associated Investigative Committee for Political Investigatio
Raskin, along with Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren, both of California, and the panel’s vice chair GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, comprise the subcommittee.
The House committee voted to hold him in criminal contempt of Congress because he refused to testify, and also to refer the matter to the Justice Department because he did not turn over other documents. The Justice Department has declined to indict Meadows for evading his subpoena, given his high level position in the Trump West Wing and claims of executive privilege.
Raskin also suggested Thursday that previous referrals to DOJ for contempt of Congress would not impact how the panel handles these criminal referrals.
“We obviously did contempt of Congress referrals earlier and there’s a whole statutory process for making that happen,” he said. “But you know we will explain our decisions in detail – why we are making certain kinds of referrals for certain people and other kinds for others.”
A federal judge ruled in March that the two men could be guilty of planning a crime as they tried to disrupt the January 6 congressional certification of the presidential election. The FBI seized Eastman’s phone in June as part of its criminal investigation according to a court filing from Eastman.
The committee walked through the testimony of Eastman, who put forward a legal theory that Pence could block certification of the election but was swiftly rejected by Trump and his White House attorneys.
The former DOJ official was facing a criminal contempt of Congress referral at the time after he refused to answer the committee’s questions at a prior deposition. Clark’s lawyer told the committee that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions about the referral because it might incriminate him.
The June hearing focused heavily on Clark’s role in Trump trying to get the Justice Department to intervene in the 2020 election in order to stay in power.
In particular, the committee zeroed in on the efforts of Rep. Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican, who connected Clark to the White House in December 2020.
CNN has previously reported on the role that Perry played, and the committee in court filings released text messages Perry exchanged with Meadows about Clark.
Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide to the leader of the democrats, said in a deposition played at the hearing that he wanted Mr. Jeff Clark to run the department of justice.
Giuliani, Trump’s onetime personal attorney and a lead architect of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, met with the panel in May for more than nine hours.
In the initial subpoena, the committee claims that Giuliani promoted claims of election fraud in order to get state legislators to overturn the election results. According to the subpoena, Rudy Giuliani was talking to Trump and members of Congress about strategies for postponing or changing the result of the 2020 election.
The subcommittee tasked with investigating criminal referrals presented its recommendations to the full panel at a 1 p.m. ET virtual meeting, but it is unclear if those recommendations were officially adopted. The source described the meeting as successful but did not provide further details.
The committee has a decision to make. The members of the panel all agree that Trump and some of his closest allies are guilty of a crime for trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. But they have long been split over what exactly to do about it.
“We are in common agreement about what our approach should be. I am not ready to tell you what that is at the moment, but I will. We all agreed that there is evidence of criminal activity here. And we want to make sure that the Justice Department is aware of that.
If we go forward with it, I think it is an important decision. It should be given due consideration by the Department.