What to watch as Jan. 6 committee wraps up its investigation

The Jan. 6 Committee. Image via AP.

The House committee investigating the Capitol riot will make its final public presentation Monday about the unprecedented effort by Donald Trump to overturn the results of the presidential election he lost in 2020. The committee has called it an “attempted coup” that warrants criminal prosecution from the Justice Department.

That is expected to be the committee’s closing argument as it wraps up a year-and-a-half-long inquiry and prepares to release a final report detailing its findings about the insurrection in the nation’s capital on Jan. 6, 2021. The committee of seven Democrats, including Winter Park Rep. Stephanie Murphy, and two Republicans is set to dissolve at the end of the year.

Monday’s meeting will be the committee’s 11th public session since forming in July 2021. One of the first hearings, on June 9, was viewed by more than 20 million people.

What to watch for in Monday’s meeting at 1 p.m. EST:

Referring a President

The committee is expected to make both criminal and civil referrals against the former President and his allies, who, according to lawmakers, broke the law or committed ethical violations .

“We are focused on key players where there is sufficient evidence or abundant evidence that they committed crimes,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, told reporters last week. “We’re focused on crimes that go right to the heart of the constitutional order, such that the Congress can’t remain silent.”

The committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said the referrals may include criminal, ethics violations, legal misconduct and campaign finance violations.

It will fall to federal prosecutors to decide whether to bring charges. Lawmakers have suggested their recommended charges against Trump could include conspiracy to defraud the United State, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and insurrection.

Even though they are non-binding, the recommendations by the committee would add to the political pressure on the Justice Department as special counsel Jack Smith conducts an investigation into Jan. 6 and Trump’s actions.

A record for history

Lawmakers have promised that Monday’s session will include a preview of the committee’s final report, expected to be released Wednesday. The panel will vote on adopting the official record, effectively authorizing the release of the report to the public.

The eight-chapter report will include hundreds of pages of findings about the attack and Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy, drawing on what the committee learned through its interviews with more than 1,000 witnesses.

It will roughly mirror the series of public hearings the committee held in the summer that detailed the various facets of the investigation, including the role of extremist groups in the violence on Jan. 6, Trump’s attempt to enlist the Justice Department in his schemes and Trump’s coordination with GOP lawmakers to overturn the election results.

Additional evidence, including some of the massive trove of video footage and testimony the committee collected, is expected to be released publicly before the end of the year.

Anticipation for the final report is high. Book publishers are already offering pre-release versions for sale to the public.

Legislative changes

As the committee convenes one final time, a major legislative response to the insurrection could be on the fast-track to passage.

Lawmakers are expected to overhaul the arcane election law that Trump tried to subvert after his 2020 election defeat by including legislative changes in a year-end spending bill.

The proposed overhaul of the Electoral Count Act is one of the many byproducts of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. A group of bipartisan lawmakers has been working on the legislation since the insurrection. Trump and his allies tried to find loopholes in that law before the congressional certification of the 2020 vote as the former President worked to overturn his defeat to Joe Biden and unsuccessfully pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to go along.

The bill, if passed, would amend the 19th century law that, along with the Constitution, governs how states and Congress certify electors and declare presidential election winners, ensuring the popular vote from each state is protected from manipulation and that Congress does not arbitrarily decide presidential elections.

The committee is also expected to release its own legislative proposals in its final report, with ideas for how to strengthen and expand the guardrails that protected the Electoral College certification in 2021.

Closing arguments

Since its formation, the Jan. 6 committee has strived to build a record for history and deepen the public’s understanding of what led to the Capitol attack and the individuals involved in it.

“We obviously want to complete the story for the American people,” Raskin said. “Everybody has come on a journey with us and we want a satisfactory conclusion, such that people feel that Congress has done its job.”

After conducting thousands of interviews — ranging from Trump Cabinet secretaries to members of his own family — and obtaining tens of thousands of documents, congressional investigators say they have created the most comprehensive look at the worst attack on the Capitol in two centuries.

But the 16-month investigation has also provided a road map of sorts for criminal investigations, influencing the probes of Trump and Jan. 6 that are progressing at the local, state and federal level.

Monday’s session will be the last word for the committee as its “select” committee status expires at the end of the current Congress.

Once Republicans take the majority next year, they are not expected to renew the committee, instead launching a slew of investigations that will focus on the Biden administration and the President’s family.

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.