Panel claims Donald Trump engaged in ‘criminal conspiracy’ over Capitol riot
3 March 2022, 04:44
However, lawmakers do not have the power to bring charges on their own and can only make a referral to the Justice Department.
The House committee investigating the US Capitol insurrection says that its evidence shows former president Donald Trump and his associates engaged in a “criminal conspiracy” to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the presidential election.
The panel also said its evidence shows Mr Trump and others spread false information about the poll’s outcome and pressured state officials to overturn it.
The committee made the claims in a filing in response to a lawsuit by Trump adviser John Eastman. Eastman, a lawyer who was consulting with Mr Trump as he attempted to overturn the election, is trying to withhold documents from the committee as it investigates the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
The committee argued there is a legal exception to attorney-client privilege allowing the disclosure of communications regarding ongoing or future crimes.
“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 US 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 since lawmakers do not have the power to bring charges on their own and can only make a referral to the Justice Department.
The department has been investigating last year’s riot, but has not given any indication that it is considering seeking charges against Mr Trump.
“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.
The brief filed on Wednesday was in an effort by the committee to refute attorney-client privilege claims made by Mr Eastman in order to withhold records from congressional investigators.
“The Select Committee is not conducting a criminal investigation,” Mississippi Representative 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.”
A request for comment from Mr Eastman’s lawyer was not immediately returned.
The filing also details excerpts 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 found evidence that Mr Trump sought to obstruct an official proceeding — in this case, the certification of the election results — by trying to strongarm Mr Pence to delay the proceedings so there would be additional time to “manipulate” the results.
