Jan. 6 committee refers Trump to DOJ for criminal charges

The Jan. 6 committee is also making referrals for four Republican lawmakers to the House Committee on Ethics for their failure to comply with subpoenas.

The members being referred, according to the executive summary of the committee's report, are House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Reps. Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Andy Biggs.

"We asked multiple members of Congress to speak with us about issues critical to our understanding of this attack on the 2020 election, and our system of constitutional democracy. None agreed to provide that essential information," Rep. Jamie Raskin said. "As a result, we took the significant step of issuing them subpoenas based on the volume of information particular members possessed about one or more parts of President Trump's plans to overturn the election. None of the subpoenaed members complied."

After Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., outlined the criminal referrals it was making for Trump, John Eastman and others, the committee voted unanimously to transmit their referrals to the Justice Department.

"We understand the gravity of each and every referral we are making today, just as we understand the magnitude of the crime against democracy that we describe in our report -- but we have gone where the facts in the law lead us, and inescapably, they lead us here," Raskin said.

It is now up to the Justice Department to pursue the charges or even acknowledge them, but it's not obligated to do.

"We have every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a roadmap to justice and that the agencies and institutions responsible for ensuring justice under law will use the information we provided to aid in their work," Thompson said at the start of the meeting.

Rep. Jamie Raskin announced four criminal referrals for Trump to the Department of Justice. Those referrals are: Obstruction of an Official Proceeding; Conspiracy to Defraud the United States; Conspiracy to Make a False Statement and “Incite,” “Assist” or “Aid and Comfort” an Insurrection.

In a dramatic climax, Rep. Jamie Raskin announced that the evidence obtained by the committee "warrants a criminal referral, of former president Donald J. Trump, John Eastman and others."

"We propose to the committee advancing referrals where the gravity of the specific offense, the severely of its actual harm and the centrality of the offender to the overall design of the unlawful scheme to the overall election compel to us speak," Raskin said. "Ours is not a skim of justice where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass."

Raskin said "the starting point" of their analysis is how a federal judge already found Trump's and John Eastman's pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct the congressional count of electoral votes "more likely than not" violated two federal criminal statutes: obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

The announcement of the referrals is ongoing.