What to expect from the Jan. 6 committee’s final public meeting

December 20, 2022

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(WASHINGTON) — After months of political drama, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol holds its final public act Monday afternoon.

The meeting — the panel’s tenth televised one this year — is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. Eastern.

The most important business at hand: the committee’s decision on criminal referrals.

Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., tasked a subcommittee to make recommendations on criminal referrals and to explore enforcement options for the five Republican lawmakers who ignored subpoenas to testify: Reps. Kevin McCarthy, Andy Biggs, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Mo Brooks.

Sources familiar told ABC News the committee is preparing to urge the Department of Justice to prosecute former President Donald Trump for obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Another criminal charge under discussion is insurrection, the sources said.

Thompson has said to expect “five or six” categories of referrals, which means there could be referrals to several different entities such as the Justice Department or the House Committee on Ethics.

The extent of the criminal referrals, and who will be targeted, will be made clear on Monday as the committee is expected to release a separate, shorter report on the matter. Any referrals would be a largely symbolic move, though, as it’s ultimately up to federal prosecutors whether to pursue charges.

On Sunday evening, a select committee aide provided a short statement about the committee’s coming actions.

“Following the business meeting, the Select Committee is expected to release certain materials, including an executive summary of the report, details on referrals, and additional information about witnesses who have appeared before the committee,” the aide said.

The eventual complete report will be hundreds of pages long and is likely to closely follow the themes of each of the panel’s hearings.

Those included Trump’s pressure campaigns on Justice Department officials, local election officials and on former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election.

The panel also heard testimony from White House insiders who described Trump’s desire to join his supporters at the Capitol and his resistance to pleas from his advisers to quickly condemn the rioters.

The committee recapped its major findings during its last hearing on Oct. 13, just weeks before the midterm elections, but may do so again on Monday.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., recently said the committee’s comprehensive report will paint a “fulsome picture” of events surrounding the Capitol attack.

“This is all about telling the American people about what happened and leaving with them the opportunity to say, democracies can have bad days, but how we come back from those bad days is how we’ll be defined,” Kinzinger told ABC’s This Week.

The House select committee, formed in July 2021 after an effort to create an independent commission was ultimately blocked by Republicans, will expire at year’s end. But the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigations will continue despite the congressional committee being disbanded.