J6 committee about to steer DOJ into uncharted territory

The House select committee is expected to recommend criminal charges against former president Donald Trump, which would steer federal investigators into uncharted territory.

The legislative panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection will likely recommend the Department of Justice charge the ex-president with obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States and insurrection, and it may also recommend similar charges against some Trump advisers and former administration officials, reported the Washington Post.

“A referral really just means that one part of the government is sending to the executive government information and requesting that the Department of Justice investigate these matters,” said Stephen A. Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University.

The Justice Department, which is already investigating the matter on its own, would then decide whether or not to act on that request, although attorney general Merrick Garland would likely view the legislative referral -- which could result in the first criminal charges against a former president -- more seriously.

“A criminal referral from Congress as a matter of legal doctrine does not carry that much more legal weight than from an ordinary citizen,” said Daniel Richman, a law professor at Columbia University.

Criminal referrals, which technically be submitted by anyone, would raise public awareness that Congress believes Trump and his allies broke the law, and that could put pressure on the department to charge them.

“One of the purposes of a referral is that if you think there is a crime, it puts some accountability on the prosecutor’s decision on whether to charge or not,” Richman said. “It’s an accountability-shifting device.”

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Congress recommended criminal charges against former Trump administration officials Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in the past two years, and the Justice Department ultimately charged Bannon and Navarro with contempt of Congress but declined to prosecute Scavino and Meadows -- but the next referrals would be far more complex.

“It would involve putting a whole lot more facts together and making a whole lot more inferences from those facts,” Richman said. “The contempt cases were cut and dry.”