The House of Representatives’ select committee was established by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and was given the task of investigating what took place on January 6, 2021. They held their last public hearing on Monday and they revealed that they would be making four criminal referrals for former President Donald Trump to the Department of Justice.
The four referrals are for:
- Obstruction of an official proceeding
- Conspiracy to defraud the United States
- Conspiracy to make a false statement
- Inciting or assisting an insurrection
Trump was not the only person to get criminal referrals, some of his associates were targeted by the partisan committee as well. The others included: Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Mark Meadows, and Jeffrey Clark.
Here’s how the referrals panned out, Trump was referred for insurrection; Trump, Clark Eastman, and Chesebro for obstruction of the official proceeding; Trump, Eastman, Clark Chesebro, Meadows, and Giuliani for conspiracy to defraud the United States; and Trump, Eastman, and Chesebro for conspiracy to make a false statement.
In addition to these counts, the January 6 committee is referring four GOP members to the House Ethics Committee for refusing to testify after they were subpoenaed. Those who received this referral are Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, and Andy Biggs.
A spokesperson for Rep. Jordan, Russell Dye, said that the Ethics Committee referral “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 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.”
The truth is that Congress has no enforcement power, so these referrals are pretty much symbolic.
Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor, called the referrals “theater” since they don’t have any legal binding.
#January6thCommittee Criminal Referrals of President Donald J. Trump to the Department of Justice. pic.twitter.com/Ls8y9qLRX5
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 19, 2022
