Trump should face charges

The US House of Representatives panel probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol asked federal prosecutors on Monday to charge Donald Trump with four crimes, including obstruction and insurrection, for his role in sparking the deadly riot.

The Democratic-led select committee’s request to the Justice Department – after more than 1,000 witness interviews and the collection of hundreds of thousands of documents – marked the first time in history that Congress has referred a former president for criminal prosecution.

The request does not compel federal prosecutors to act, but comes as a special counsel is overseeing two other federal probes of Trump related to the Republican’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat and the removal of classified files from the White House.

The committee asked the Justice Department to charge Trump with four potential felonies: obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements, and aiding or inciting an insurrection.

Trump accused House lawmakers on Monday of recommending “fake charges” against him as part of an attempt to prevent him from running for the White House again.

“The Fake charges made by the highly partisan Unselect Committee of January 6th have already been submitted, prosecuted, and tried in the form of Impeachment Hoax #2,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. “I WON convincingly.”

Trump gave a fiery speech to his supporters near the White House the morning of Jan. 6, and publicly chastised his vice president, Mike Pence, for not going along with his scheme to reject ballots cast in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. Trump then waited hours to make a public statement as thousands of his supporters raged through the Capitol, assaulting police and threatening to hang Pence.

Monday’s meeting was the last public gathering of the panel that spent 18 months probing the attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power by thousands of Trump backers, inspired by his false claims that his 2020 election loss to Biden was the result of widespread fraud.