The Facts Underpinning Jan. 6 Committee Criminal Referrals

After a year and a half and more than 1,000 interviews, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol released a 154-page summary of its final report on Dec. 19 that concludes former President Donald Trump was responsible for a “multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 Presidential election.”

“That evidence has led to an overriding and straight-forward conclusion: the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” the report states. “None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”

The committee took the unprecedented step of including four criminal referrals to the Department of Justice regarding Trump and others. Those referrals will be passed along to Jack Smith, an independent special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to look into criminal accusations against Trump.

The Department of Justice is under no obligation to consider a criminal prosecution based on the referrals. The New York Times said it “remains unclear just how closely the special counsel’s office in charge of the Justice Department’s own investigation will follow the path mapped out by the committee — or whether Mr. Trump and others will face any criminal charges at all.”

Nonetheless, no former president has ever faced a criminal referral from Congress. Here we will outline the four criminal referrals brought by the committee, and the evidence it cites to back them up.

Obstruction of an Official Proceeding

The first criminal referral from the committee alleges Trump violated of the U.S. Code, which relates to someone who “corruptly … obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” In this case, the