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JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
In addition to facing the judgment of voters if he runs again, former president Donald Trump has legal exposure, some of which Rep. Liz
Cheney (R-Wyo.) hinted at in December, implying the Jan. 6 committee was looking to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department.Donald Trump’s
future is playing
out in three
venues: the House
committee
investigating the
Jan. 6 assault on
the U.S. Capitol,
the judicial system
and the broader
political arena.
The first two are intriguing — the
prospect of the former president
being charged with a crime for
the effect of his lies about the
2020 election. The third, however,
is the most important, with the
voters having the loudest voice.
In December, Rep. Liz C heney
(R-Wyo.) hinted strongly that the
Jan. 6 committee was looking to
make a criminal referral to the
Justice Department when she
used language directly from the
U.S. Code to question Trump’s
activities. “Did Donald Trump,”
she asked, “through action or
inaction, corruptly seek to
obstruct or impede Congress’s
official proceeding to count
electoral votes?”
What was suggested by Cheney
in December became explicit in
the committee’s latest legal
document. The filing was part of
an effort to obtain access to
emails and other documents from
John Eastman, a lawyer advising
Trump who led an effort — as part
of an overall plan to overturn the
election — to persuade Vice
President Mike Pence to disrupt
Congress’s counting of the
electoral college votes. In the
filing, the committee’s lawyers say
there is e vidence that “establishes
a good-faith belief that Mr. Trump
and others may have engaged in
criminal and/or fraudulent acts.”
In a s tatement accompanying
the release of the filing, Rep.
Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.),
the chairman of the committee,
and C heney, the committee’s vice
chair, said, “The facts we’ve
gathered strongly suggest that Dr.
Eastman’s emails may show that
he helped Donald Trump advance
a corrupt scheme to obstruct the
counting of electoral college
ballots and a conspiracy to
impede the transfer of power.”
The filing refers to obstruction
or attempted obstruction of an
official proceeding — the
counting of the electoral votes by
Congress — and an effort todefraud the United States,
presumably through repeated
false claims of widespread
irregularities in the vote counts in
the states, false claims that
eventually led to the attack on the
Capitol.
The filing includes numbers of
attachments — portions of
committee depositions with
former Justice Department
officials, advisers to Pence and
others, along with a long email
thread between Eastman and
Greg Jacob, a l awyer and aide to
Pence, on the day of the attack.
Those attachments leave no
doubt that the president was told
repeatedly, starting in the days
after the election, that there was
no valid e vidence of widespread
fraud, that he had lost.
Despite that, Trump persisted
in his claims that the election was
stolen, in his hectoring of state
election officials, his badgering of
Pence to do what Pence said he
was not constitutionally
authorized to do as the presiding
officer at the joint session of
Congress, and in calling loyalists
to Washington for a rally that
then saw thousands attack the
Capitol in the middle of the
electoral vote counting.
The committee has much work
left to do, with depositions
continuing, public hearings set
for later this year and, eventually,
a full report of its findings. It has
no power to charge Trump with
obstruction or fraud. At most it
can highlight its findings through
public testimony and ultimately
make a referral to the Justice
Department and hope that
officials there will take the next
steps and pursue legal
proceedings against the former
president.
The legal path to holding
Trump accountable, however,
remains uncertain.
At a minimum, last week’s
committee filing adds to the
pressure on Attorney General
Merrick Garland to pursue such
charges. A formal referral from
the committee later this year
would put front and center the
question of whether the Justice
Department is prepared to do
what many Trump opponents
have been calling for since the
Jan. 6 attack took place.
Garland has been circumspect
about the work underway atJustice. On the day before the first
anniversary of the attacks, he
delivered a speech in which he
said, “The Justice Department
remains committed to holding all
January 6 th perpetrators, at any
level, accountable under law —
whether they were present that
day or were otherwise criminally
responsible for the assault on our
democracy. We will follow the
facts wherever they lead.”
Garland’s language was legal
boilerplate and yet tantalizing to
those who have argued that not
holding Trump accountable for
what happened on Jan. 6 would
be a dereliction of duty.
On Thursday, Deputy Attorney
General Lisa Monaco appeared
on PBS’s “NewsHour.” She was
asked about the House
committee’s statement about
evidence that points to a good-
faith basis for charging Trump.
She repeated what Garland said
two months ago.
“We are going to follow the
facts in the law in what is the
most wide-ranging and complex
investigation into the e vents of
January 6 that the department
has ever undertaken, and we are
going to do so regardless of where
the facts take us, regardless of
what level,” she said.
When the program’s G eoff
Bennett asked her about
complaints that Garland is not
moving quickly enough, given all
the available evidence of alleged
criminal actions by Trump and
those around him at the time, she
said, “He [Garland] was quite
clear then and quite forceful that
we will follow those facts
wherever they lead, regardless of
at what level and from what
direction. And there should be no
mistake about that.”
Still, what members of the
House Jan. 6 committee, or
people eager to see Trump
charged with a crime, might see
as clear-cut criminal violations
may not be enough to persuade
Garland to take the risky step of
charging the former president.
The ramifications of such a
decision are enormous, including
crucial questions of whether the
evidence is so ironclad that the
government could be certain of
getting a conviction, and the
momentous political
considerations of having this
administration charge the chief
executive of the prior
administration with a crime.
Former attorney general
William P. Barr told NBC’s Lester
Holt in an interview promoting
Barr’s new book that while he
thinks Trump was “responsible inthe broad sense” for what
happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6,
“I haven’t seen anything to say he
was legally responsible for it in
terms of incitement.” The full
interview will air at 9 p.m.
Sunday.
Garland is known as a cautious
attorney general, and his caution
is a c ause of consternation among
those who think the evidence
against the former president in
incontrovertible. But Garland is
also known as someone who
pursues cases with relentless
focus, as he did as a Justice
Department official after the
Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
Whatever comes from the legal
system, the public is likely to have
the last word. The first
indications of sentiment toward
the former president will come in
the November midterm elections,
when the power of his
endorsements will be tested both
in Republican primaries and then
against a general election
audience. Already, there are signs
his influence is waning. But the
true test will come in 2024,
should he choose to run for
president again, when an
electorate that has once elected
him and once rejected him would
have one more opportunity to
render a judgment on his fitness.
At a moment when the world
has united against Russian
President Vladimir Putin in
reaction to his invasion of
Ukraine, there is nervousness
abroad about a possible return to
power by Trump in 2024. These
are concerns of long standing that
have taken on heightened
prominence in light of the U.S.
role in rallying other countries
behind severe sanctions on
Russia and military assistance to
the Ukrainian government, and
the reality that this could be a
long struggle to keep Russia
isolated, regardless of how the
fighting in Ukraine turns out.
To date, Trump’s opponents
have found no success in using
legal avenues to deny him power.
He was twice impeached by the
House and twice acquitted by the
Senate on largely party-line votes.
Other investigations, some now
ongoing for years, have not yet
borne fruit. The Jan. 6
committee’s findings will be seen
by nearly half the country as
purely political. T he Justice
Department’s work carries
considerable risks.
Above all, this is a political
struggle, long underway with
Trump as the focal point, a battle
ultimately to be decided at the
ballot box.Trump’s fate really lies w ith voters at the ballot box
Dan Balz
THE SUNDAY
TAKETALK SHOWSGuests to be interviewed Sunday on major television talk shows9 a.m. FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG)
Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova;
Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).
9 a.m. STATE OF THE UNION (CNN)
Secretary of State Antony Blinken; Sen. Marco Rubio (R-
Fla.); Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European
Commission; Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.); Nadezhda
Tolokonnikova of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot.
9 a.m. THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA)
Rubio; U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda
Thomas-Greenfield.
9 a.m. WHITE HOUSE CHRONICLE (PBS, WETA)
Host Llewellyn King discusses the impact of Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine on Europe with Suriya Jayanti,
managing director of Eney, and Kostis Geropoulos, energy
and Russian affairs editor of New Europe.
10 a.m. THIS IS AMERICA & THE WORLD (PBS, WETA)
Dennis Wholey speaks with Ambassador Hynek Kmonícek
of the Czech Republic about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,
the Czech Republic’s unique history within Central Europe
and its relationship with the United States.
10:30 a.m. MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC)
Blinken; former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
Nikki Haley; Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.); Fiona Hill,
former senior director for European and Russian affairs on
the National Security Council.
10:30 a.m. FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA)
Markarova; Blinken; Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.);
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina
Georgieva.
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