January 6 committee to use last meeting to refer Trump to justice department

The panel is expected to take several conclusive steps at the meeting, announced for 1pm, including outlining its investigative findings and legislative recommendations, voting to formally adopt the report, and then voting to issue criminal and civil referrals.

The committee was scheduled to meet over the weekend to finalize the referrals, which, in the case of Trump, center on obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States, among other potential charges, the Guardian first reported.

In addition to Trump, the select committee is likely to proceed with criminal referrals against top former White House advisers, including the former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and to make civil referrals to the House ethics committee for GOP members of Congress and recommend disbarments for Trump lawyers.

The criminal referrals are largely symbolic. Congress has no ability to compel prosecutions by the justice department, although it has increasingly ramped up its own January 6 investigations in recent weeks and subpoenaed a parade of top Trump advisers to testify before at least two grand juries in Washington.

Though Trump did not leave a paper trail that might come back to haunt him as evidence, his aides did. And although Trump deftly wielded the powers of the presidency while in office to stymie investigations, once out of office he found those powers drastically reduced.

As a result, the select committee was able to draw upon testimony from hundreds of witnesses and thousands of documents, including White House materials turned over by the National Archives, that investigators believe amount to compelling evidence of criminality, the sources said.

The panel is only expected to provide a top-level outline of its report on Monday, though the entirety of the eight-chapter document is scheduled to be made public on Wednesday, and all of the deposition transcripts will be released online before the end of the year.

The transcripts and other evidence cited in the report will be uploaded, with some redactions, through the Government Publishing Office, another federal agency, in an attempt to ensure that the House Republican majority in the next Congress cannot unilaterally remove the documents.