(FreedomBeacon.com)- Earlier this week, members of the House’s special January 6 investigating committee have said they have come to a “general agreement” on how they’ll move forward with sending criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.
The panel’s chairman, Mississippi Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, told reporters on Tuesday that “we will” make criminal referrals in the case.
The committee was set to meet later in the day on Tuesday to discuss how they would move forward, but the panel has not made their intentions completely public as of yet. All that the committee did say, through a statement from a spokesperson, was:
“The Committee has determined that referrals to outside entities should be considered as a final part of its work. The committee will make decisions about specifics in the days ahead.”
On Thursday, several media outlets reported that the panel is considering referring at least four other individuals to the DOJ for criminal charges, in addition to former President Donald Trump.
Those four people, according to sources, could be Jeffrey Clark, a former official at the DOJ under Trump; Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s one-time personal lawyer; John Eastman, a conservative lawyer; and Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff at the White House.
The sources did add that the panel hasn’t made a final decision on who to refer to the DOJ, or what charges to refer them for. The four people listed above are only a few who are under discussion for potential charges.
Like much of the committee’s work, the criminal referrals would essentially just be symbolic in nature. That’s because the DOJ is already conducting an investigation of its own into the events of January 6, 2021, and it has been doing so for months now.
Still, the committee members decided after a lot of deliberation that they needed to conclude their work by making criminal referrals. It’s not altogether surprising, especially since committee members have consistently said that crimes were committed by multiple people who tried to aid and abet Trump in stopping the certification of the 2020 presidential election on January 6, 2021.
Thompson said that a final decision on the criminal referrals could come as soon as this weekend, when the members are expected to hold a virtual meeting. On Thursday, he explained to reporters the evolution of how the committee members came to the conclusion that they needed to issue criminal referrals.
He explained:
“I think the more we looked at the body of evidence that we had collected, we just felt that while we’re not in the business of investigating people for criminal activities, we just couldn’t overlook some of them.”
Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat who leads the panel’s subcommittee that was tasked with making recommendations on the criminal referrals, also added Thursday:
“I think anyone who engages in criminal actions needs to be held accountable for them, and we are going spell that out.
“The gravest offense in constitutional terms is the attempt to overthrow a presidential election and bypass the constitutional order. Subsidiary to all of that are a whole host of statutory offenses, which support the gravity and magnitude of that violent assault on America.”
