WASHINGTON (AP) — The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol said Wednesday for the first time that its evidence suggests crimes may have been committed by former President Donald Trump and his associates in the failed effort to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump and his associates engaged in a “criminal conspiracy” to prevent Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the Electoral College, the House committee said in a court filing. Trump and those working with him spread false information about the outcome of the presidential election and pressured state officials to overturn the results, potentially violating multiple federal laws, the panel said.
“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee wrote in a filing submitted in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.
The 221-page filing marks the committee’s most formal effort to link the former president to a federal crime, though the actual import of the filing is not clear. Lawmakers do not have the power to bring criminal charges on their own and can only make a referral to the Justice Department. The department has been investigating last year’s riot, but it has not given any indication that it is considering seeking charges against Trump.
The committee made the claims in response to a lawsuit by Trump adviser John Eastman, a lawyer and law professor who was consulting with Trump as he attempted to overturn the election. Eastman is trying to withhold documents from the committee.
In a statement late Wednesday, Charles Burnham, Eastman’s attorney, said his client has a responsibility “to protect client confidences, even at great personal risk and expense.”
Burnham added, “The Select Committee has responded to Dr. Eastman’s efforts to discharge this responsibility by accusing him of criminal activity.”
The brief filed Wednesday was an effort to knock down Eastman’s attorney-client privilege claims. In doing so, the committee argued there is a legal exception allowing the disclosure of communications regarding ongoing or future crimes.
“The Select Committee is not conducting a criminal investigation,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic chairman, said in a statement. “But, as the judge noted at a previous hearing, Dr. Eastman’s privilege claims raise the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege applies in this situation.”
The filing also provides new details from the committee’s interviews with several top Trump aides and members of former Vice President Mike Pence’s team, including chief of staff Marc Short and chief counsel Greg Jacob.
The committee said it has evidence that Trump sought to obstruct an official proceeding — in this case, the certification of the election results — by trying to strong-arm Pence to delay the proceedings so there would be additional time to “manipulate” the results.
“The evidence supports an inference that President Trump and members of his campaign knew he had not won enough legitimate state electoral votes to be declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential election during the January 6 Joint Session of Congress, but the President nevertheless sought to use the Vice President to manipulate the results in his favor,” the filing states.
In a Jan. 6, 2021, email exchange between Eastman and Jacob revealed by the committee, Eastman pushed for Pence to intervene in his ceremonial role and halt the certification of the electoral votes, a step Pence had no power to take.
Jacob replied: “I respect your heart here. I share your concerns about what Democrats will do once in power. I want election integrity fixed. But I have run down every legal trail placed before me to its conclusion, and I respectfully conclude that as a legal framework, it is a results-oriented position that you would never support if attempted by the opposition, and essentially entirely made up.”
He added, “And thanks to your bulls—-, we are now under siege.”
