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A congressional investigation into last year’s Capitol riot may recommend three criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.
And US media reported that the House of Representatives committee will seek to charge Trump with incitement to insurrection, an unprecedented charge against a former US president.
The committee is expected to publish its final report next week.
Trump supporters stormed Congress on January 6, 2021 in an attempt to stop Joe Biden’s accreditation as president.
And the Justice Department, which is already investigating Trump’s role in the unrest, is under no obligation to consider referrals from any congressional committee.
Trump also denies any wrongdoing. “The Jan. 6 Commission held mock trials of the ‘Never Trump’ campaign supporters who represent a disgrace to the history of this country,” his spokesman, Stephen Cheung, said in a statement on Friday.
The committee is due to hold its final meeting on Monday, when any recommendations for charges will be made public.
In addition to incitement to insurrection, the committee will propose charging Trump with obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
The nine participants are expected to approve the final eight-chapter report, based on interviews with more than 1,000 witnesses, and submit it to the Ministry of Justice.
The committee’s chairman, a Mississippi Democrat, said the full report will be released on Wednesday.
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California Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, another member of the committee, told CNN on Friday that lawmakers “were very careful in crafting these recommendations and relating them to the facts that we discovered.”
The commission said Trump publicized allegations he knew were false about the theft of the 2020 presidential election, before pressuring state officials, the Department of Justice and his deputy to help change the outcome of the election in his favour. The committee accuses him of inciting riots at the Capitol in a last-ditch effort to stay in power.
The Justice Department is already investigating Trump’s actions regarding the riots.
Seven days after the congressional raid, the House of Representatives questioned Trump in preparation for his impeachment for the second time on the grounds of incitement to insurrection.
Trump, the only president to have faced impeachment proceedings twice, was acquitted by the US Senate.
Last month, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a former war crimes prosecutor to decide whether Trump should be prosecuted.
Jack Smith has been tasked with determining whether the presumptive 2024 presidential nominee should be prosecuted for mishandling classified files recovered during an FBI search of a Trump estate in Florida in August, or for encouraging rioters on January 6, 2021.
Hundreds of people have been charged with crimes related to storming Congress.
Dozens were convicted, including Doug Jensen – whom prosecutors described as the “principal face” of the riots and as one of the first to storm the Capitol, and Stuart Rhodes, leader of the far-right militia “Oath Keepers”.