Riot panel recommends Trump face charges
Patricia Zengerle and Moira Warburton |
The US House of Representatives panel probing the attack on the Capitol has asked federal prosecutors to charge Donald Trump with four crimes, including obstruction and insurrection, for his role in sparking the deadly riot.
The Democratic-led select committee’s request on Monday to the Justice Department – after more than 1000 witness interviews and the collection of hundreds of thousands of documents in an 18-month investigation – marked the first time in history that Congress has referred a former president for criminal prosecution.
The request does not compel federal prosecutors to act, but comes as a special counsel is overseeing two other federal probes of Trump related to the Republican’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat and the removal of classified files from the White House.
The committee asked the Justice Department to charge Trump with four potential felonies: obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements, and aiding or inciting an insurrection.
“An insurrection is a rebellion against the authority of the United States. It is a grave federal offence, anchored in the Constitution itself,” Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democratic select committee member, said as he announced the charges.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump gave a fiery speech to his supporters near the White House the morning of January 6, 2021, and publicly chastised his vice president, Mike Pence for not going along with his scheme to reject ballots cast in favour of Democrat Joe Biden. Trump then waited hours to make a public statement as thousands of his supporters raged through the Capitol, assaulting police and threatening to hang Pence.
Monday’s meeting was the last public gathering of the nine-member panel that spent 18 months probing the unprecedented attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power by thousands of Trump backers, inspired by his false claims that his 2020 election loss to Biden was the result of widespread fraud.
Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairperson, slammed Trump for summoning the mob to the Capitol nearly two years ago and criticised him for undermining faith in the democratic system by repeating false claims of fraud.
“If the faith is broken, so is our democracy. Donald Trump broke that faith,” Thompson said.
The committee also said it referred four Republican House members, including Kevin McCarthy, the favourite to be the next House speaker, to the chamber’s ethics committee, for failing to comply with subpoenas as it investigated the attack.
Republicans will take the majority in the House on January 3 and are unlikely to act against members of their own leadership.
Trump has already launched a campaign to seek the Republican nomination to run for the White House again in 2024.
Five people, including a police officer, died during or shortly after the incident and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.
“Among the most shameful of this committee’s findings, was that President Trump sat in the dining room off the Oval Office, watching the violent riot at the Capitol on television,” said Representative Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the committee and its vice chairwoman.
A summary of the committee’s report also said the panel believed there were grounds to recommend criminal charges against some others close to Trump, including lawyer John Eastman.
The report summary named other Trump associates, including former Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark, former White House Chief of Staff and House member Mark Meadows and two lawyers – Kenneth Chesebro and Rudy Giuliani – as participating in conspiracies the panel is linking to Trump.
Trump has dismissed the many investigations of him as politically motivated.
Reuters
