Jan. 6 select committee to review referral recommendations from Cheney, Raskin, Schiff and Lofgren at Monday session

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the Capitol riot will hold its final meeting Monday, wrapping up its year-and-a-half-long inquiry by asking the Justice Department to investigate potential crimes.

The bipartisan select committee, composed of seven Democrats and two Republicans, has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held nearly a dozen hearings and collected millions of documents as it worked to create the most comprehensive record of the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

From the archives (October 2022): Jan. 6 committee subpoenas Trump, and other key moments from the final public hearing

The Margin (July 2022): 10 key takeaways from second prime-time Jan. 6 hearing: Trump ‘chose not to act,’ spent hours watching Fox News and calling senators

The chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, has said the committee will make criminal referrals to the Justice Department recommending prosecution, but has not disclosed who the targets would be or whether former President Donald Trump would be among them. The committee has focused squarely on Trump and efforts by the-then president in the weeks before the attack to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

It would fall to federal prosecutors to decide whether to pursue any referrals for prosecution. Lawmakers have suggested charges against Trump could include conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress. Recommendations by the committee would add to the political pressure on the Justice Department as it investigates Trump’s actions.

The committee on Wednesday is expected to release its final report, which could include hundreds of pages of findings about the attack and Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy. Committee members will review the highlights of their findings at the Monday meeting.

Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee investigations related to Trump, including one focused on the insurrection and attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

See: Who is Jack Smith, the new special counsel for Trump probes?

Thompson said this week that the committee could also approve other types of referrals, including for ethics violations, legal misconduct and campaign finance violations.

“Different strokes for different folks,” committee member Jamie Raskin, a constitutional scholar and Maryland Democrat, recently told the Associated Press. “Everybody has made his or her own bed in terms of their conduct or misconduct.”

Recommendations on referrals were drafted by four lawyers on the committee: Raskin; Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the select committee’s Republican vice chair; and Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Adam Schiff, both California Democrats. They were tasked with presenting the larger group with their referral recommendations, which the committee will consider Monday.

Key Words (June 2022): Liz Cheney calls Trump a ‘domestic threat,’ says GOP can’t be loyal to both him and the Constitution