Jan 6 committee refers Donald Trump for criminal prosecution on four counts – live | January 6 hearings

The final act of the members of the January 6 House panel was to vote unanimously to approve its final report, which will be released on Wednesday.

But the “wow” moment of the hearing, which lasted a little more than one hour, was undoubtedly the historic, unprecedented criminal referral to the justice department of former president Donald Trump, including for assisting with or engaging in an insurrection against the United States.

We’ll have plenty more reaction and analysis coming up. Please stick with us.

The January 6 House panel is recommending criminal referrals for Donald Trump, his lawyer John Eastman and others for violating four federal criminal statutes, Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin says.

They are “influencing or impeding a an official proceeding of the US government”, “conspiring to defraud the US”, “unlawfully, knowingly or willingly making false statements to the federal government”, and “assisting or engaging in insurrection against the United States”.

Four members of Congress will also be referred to the House ethics committee for refusing to comply with subpoenas, he says.

“Ours is not a system where foot soldiers go to jail, and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass,” Raskin said.

The referrals will be sent to the justice department in short order, panel chair Bennie Thompson says.

More details to come…

Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger is talking about Trump’s moves to install an ally, Jeffrey Clark, as acting attorney general to ensure his election plot would succeed.

The effort came, Kinzinger said, after attorney general William Barr resigned, soon after telling Trump that the justice department had “properly investigated and debunked” claims of election fraud:

President Trump requested that the acting leadership of the department, Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donahue, quote ‘just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen’, in other words, just tell a small lie to put the facade of legitimacy on this line.

Mr Rosen and Mr Donohue told him that the fraud claims were simply untrue. As [they] continued to resist, President Trump then tried to install a loyalist named Jeffrey Clark, to lead the department as acting attorney general on several occasions.

Mr Clark intended to send a letter to officials in numerous states informing them, falsely of course, the department had identified significant concerns about the election results in their state and encouraging their state legislatures to come into special session to consider appointing [their own] rather than Biden electors.

Adam Schiff, another California Democrat, is up next, and is focusing on Donald Trump’s efforts in court, state legislatures and Congress, to reverse his election defeat:

Many state officials were targeted by President Trump and his campaign: the local election workers he accused and baselessly of election fraud, the state officials he pressured to stop the count or to find votes that didn’t exist, and the state legislative officials he urged to disregard the popular will of the voters and their oath of office in order to name him the winner instead.

The most dramatic example of this campaign of coercion was the president’s January 2 2021 call to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, in which the president urged the secretary to find 11,780 votes he needed to change the outcome in that state.

During that call, President Trump again repeated conspiracy theories about the election that his own appointees at the department of justice had already debunked.

Trump, Schiff says, also “oversaw an effort to obtain and transmit false Electoral College ballots to Congress and the National Archives”:

The false ballots were created by fake Republican electors on December 14. At the same time, the actual certified electors in those states were meeting to cast their votes for president.

By that point in time, election related litigation was over in all or nearly all of these states and Trump campaign election lawyers realized that the fake slates were unjustifiable on any grounds and may be unlawful.

In spite of these concerns, and the concerns of individuals in the White House Counsel’s office, President Trump and others proceeded with this plan.

California Democrat Zoe Lofgren is addressing the big lie, Trump’s false claim that Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election was fraudulent.

Through interviews with Trump’s aides, officials, and senior campaign members, she says, the panel made several findings, not least one that there was “an enormous effort led by ex-President Trump to spread baseless accusations and disinformation in an attempt to falsely convinced tens of millions of Americans that the election had been stolen from him”:

Ex-President Trump’s decision to declare victory falsely on election night wasn’t a spontaneous decision. It was premeditated. The committee has evidence that the ex-president planned to declare victory, and unlawfully to call for the vote counting to stop.

He told numerous allies about his impact and the weeks before the election. The committee found that Mr Trump raised hundreds of millions of dollars with false representations made to his online donors. The proceeds from his fundraising, we have learned, have been used in ways that we believe are concerning.

Trump’s lies, she says, directly caused the deadly Capitol attack:

Donald Trump knowingly and corruptly repeated election fraud lies, which incited his supporters to violence on January 6, [and he] continues to repeat this meritless claim that the election was stolen even today.

[He] continues to erode our most cherished and shared belief in free and fair elections.

House January 6 committee vice-chair Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican, is speaking next, condemning the “flatly false” statements by Donald Trump, who, she says, insisted the election was stolen and “wouldn’t accept the result”:

“Every president in our history has defended this orderly transfer of authority except one,” she says.

She also echoed chair Bennie Thompson’s words by saying: “In our work over the last 18 months, the select committee has recognized our obligation to do everything we can to ensure this never happens again”.

She’s talking about the riot that ensued when Trump’s mob of supporters overran the Capitol:

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 and television.

For hours, he would not issue a public statement instructing his supporters to disperse and leave the Capitol, despite urgencies from his White House staff and dozens of others to do so.

Cheney thinks Trump’s inaction heightened the threat to law enforcement officers desperately trying to defend lawmakers who were inside trying to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Trump:

During this time law enforcement agents were attacked and seriously injured. The Capitol was invaded, the count was halted and the lives of those in the capital were put at risk.

In addition to be unlawful as described in our report, this was an utter moral failure. And a clear dereliction of duty.”

The meeting is now watching video clips of the riot, and videos of witness testimony from this year’s live hearings and depositions supporting the panel’s stance that Trump incited the insurrection.

The final public meeting of the House January 6 committee is under way, with chair Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, laying out what’s to follow during the course of the session.

Thompson opens by saying the panel has approved the release of deposition materials.

Donald Trump “broke that faith” he says of the nation’s trust in its election mechanisms:

He lost the 2020 election and knew it. But he chose to try to stay in office through a multi-part scheme to overturn the results and block the transfer of power.

We’ve never had a president of the United States stir up a violent attempt to block the transfer of power.

The committee is expected to vote shortly on referring Trump to the justice department for criminal charges, likely to include obstruction of a proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the US, and assisting an insurrection.

Thompson told CNN just before the hearing that the panel expected to send any referrals it makes today to the justice department in very short order.

As we await the start of the final, milestone public session of the House select committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, by extremist supporters of then-president Donald Trump, here’s where things stand:

• The bipartisan House panel is expected to urge the Department of Justice to prosecute Donald Trump and several senior figures from his time in office, by voting on criminal referrals relating to their activities leading up to and including the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

• The panel is set to vote on the criminal referrals and also to vote on accepting the final report of its investigation.

• The report is expected on Wednesday and today the public expects to hear about the executive summary and the chapters on various aspects of the planning and execution of the insurrection.

• Jury selection begins today in the seditious conspiracy trial of former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and four other members of the extremist group accused of plotting the deadly January 6 Capitol attack.