January 6Select Committee Makes Criminal Referrals on Trump to DoJ

pa href=https://www.cato.org/people/patrick-g-eddington hreflang=undPatrick G. Eddington/a
/p

pAs expected, today the House January 6nbsp;Select Committee held anbsp;nearly two‐​hour public business meeting at which it approved four criminal referrals on former President Donald Trump to the Department of Justice. The specific alleged statutory violations were:/p
ol
liObstruction of an Official Proceeding (18 U.S.C. § 1512(c))/li
liConspiracy to Defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. § 371)/li
liConspiracy to Make anbsp;False Statement (18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1001)/li
li“Incite,” “Assist” or “Aid and Comfort” an Insurrection (18 U.S.C. § 2383)/li
/ol
pThe Select Committee also voted to approve its final report without amendment and transmit it to the full House and the public printer. It is expected that the full report, likely accompanied by substantial supporting materials, will be issued later this week, perhaps as early as Wednesday./p
pIn the 154+ page Executive Summary a href=https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2022-12/introductory-material-to-the-final-report-of-the-select-committee.pdfreleased/a today, the committee made the following observation on p. 48 about domestic intelligence collection in the pre‐​January 6, 2021 period as it pertained to President Trump:/p
blockquotepNo intelligence collection was apparently performed on President Trump’s plans for January 6th, nor was there any analysis performed on what he might do to exacerbate potential violence. Certain Republican members of Congress who were working with Trump and the Giuliani team may have had insight on this particular risk, but none appear to have alerted the Capitol Police or any other law enforcement authority./p
/blockquote
pThe violence and attempted obstruction of the certification of the 2020 presidential election results that happened on January 6, 2021 at the Capitol was clearly not First Amendment protected activity. But this insinuation—that federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies should have targeted the communications of anbsp;still‐​sitting chief executive while his legal appeals were making their way through federal courts—is deeply disturbing./p
pTrump’s public calls for his supporters to rally in DC in support of him and his court appeals were, by themselves, clearly First Amendment protected activities. We will learn later this week whether the Select Committee’s soon‐​to‐​be‐​revealed legislative recommendations include anbsp;call for some kind of expanded domestic surveillance authorities that may be at odds with the First and Fourth Amendments./p