CNN
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The expected move by the January 6 committee to formally ask the Department of Justice to prosecute former President Donald Trump over his role in the US Capitol insurrection will make history, whether or not charges are ever brought.
The committee, which saw its mission as essential to saving US democracy, will hold a last public meeting and is expected to call on the Justice Department to charge Trump and potentially some allies over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election in one of the darkest periods in modern politics.
Criminal referrals would be a symbolic move since the committee has no power to initiate legal proceedings itself. The Justice Department has its own federal investigation into January 6, 2021, now overseen by a special counsel. But, if merited by troves of evidence collected in hundreds of interviews and a summer of dramatic televised hearings, referrals would represent a moment of stark accountability for January 6. The historic recommendation of a prosecution against an ex-president would also lay down a marker for future elections and renegade presidents after an attack on democracy with no parallel.
Yet the fractured state of US politics and Trump’s incessant efforts to distort the truth about 2020, even as he launches a new White House bid, leave the committee clouded by familiar questions over its effectiveness, legitimacy and legacy as it contemplates its fateful final act.
The panel is expected to be wiped out next month by an incoming Republican House majority featuring scores of lawmakers who voted not to certify the last presidential election and who still whitewash that day of infamy nearly two years later.
But before then, the panel is expected to release its final report on Wednesday. There could be another moment of vulnerability and embarrassment on Tuesday for the ex-president when the Democrat-led House Ways and Means Committee meets to discuss what, if anything, to do with his tax returns that it finally received after a years-long court battle.
In its highly produced hearings, the committee – with its seven Democrats and two Republicans who split with their own party to take part – painted scenes of horrific violence and intense efforts by Trump to steal Joe Biden’s presidency.
A Capitol Police officer told how she had slipped on spilled blood during the melee caused when the ex-president’s mob smashed its way into the Capitol. A mother and daughter who worked as election workers in Georgia described how they faced racist threats after Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, accused them of vote stealing. Rusty Bowers, the outgoing Republican speaker of the Arizona state House, testified that Trump’s calls for him to meddle with the election were “foreign to my very being.”
Often, it was Republicans – some who were with Trump in the West Wing on January 6 – who courageously testified about his assault on the Constitution, including Cassidy Hutchinson. The ex-aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows recalled, “It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”
From the moment that conservative retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig warned in a June committee hearing that Trump and supporters still posed “a clear and present danger to American democracy,” it’s been clear the panel believes that Trump was in the middle of an alleged election-stealing conspiracy. With that in mind, it would be surprising if the 45th president, who earned his second impeachment over the insurrection, was not referred to the DOJ for the possibility of criminal action.
Each committee hearing was a piece in a broad case against Trump. The panel sought to show he lost the 2020 election, that he…
Read More: Jan. 6 committee expected to wrap up its work with a historic call for Trump’s accountability