The American people were offered an offer six weeks ago. Over the course of several public hearings, committee chairman Bennie Thompson promised, the panel would show evidence that Donald Trump was at the center of a "sprawling, multistep conspiracy" to overturn the presidential election.
Thompson's pledge was initially met with skepticism.
A year and a half after a violent pro-Trump mob had invaded the U.S. Capitol, delaying the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election results with a riot that left five people dead and more than 150 police officers injured, many wondered what the select committee could possibly uncover about the The most damning new evidence was not likely to have consequences for Trump.
The members of the Jan. 6 committee were not able to reach a consensus on whether to refer the former president to the DOJ for prosecution.
The only charges that have been brought against Trump associates have been for not cooperating with the select committee. More than 800 defendants have been charged as a result of the Justice Department's investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection, but only about 50 have pleaded guilty.
The issue of whether there was enough evidence to prosecute a former president has been debated by legal experts.
According to a former federal prosecutor, the likelihood that the president broke the law is high.
As a deputy chief of the Criminal Section at the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, he focused on prosecuting police excessive force and hate crimes cases and now serves as counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonprofit founded after Trump's election in 2016 whose stated mission is "to prevent American democracy from collapsing She spoke to reporters as part of a Protect Democracy press briefing.
According to what was known at that time, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, seditious conspiracy and wire fraud were likely to have been committed by Trump and associates.
She said that the Justice Department's ability to prove that a crime was committed will not affect its decision to prosecute.
She said that the department would have to show that Donald Trump and his associates knew what they were doing was wrong.
The select committee has indicated that this will be the last hearing in the series. She said that she thinks the committee has done a good job of linking Trump to the violence at the Capitol, but warned that this still may not be enough for an indictment.
She didn't think that the Justice Department was too far away. There's still more work to be done before they get to that point.
Others insist that they have seen enough.
Donald Trump was the driving force behind a massive criminal conspiracy to interfere with the official January 6 congressional proceeding and to defraud the United States of a fair election outcome.
As deputy attorney general under George H.W. Bush, and as principal deputy solicitor general in Ronald Reagan's administration, Ayer was in charge of the Justice Department. They highlighted their Republican credentials, as well as their DOJ credentials, writing, "The evidence is more robust than we thought possible before the hearings began."
The three former prosecutors argued that the committee had shown that Trump knew he had lost and that he was the rightful winner.
The witness testimony and other evidence presented during the hearings placed Trump at the center of every aspect of his effort to overturn his electoral loss, from his direct calls to state officials to his personal ploy to use the Justice Department to legitimize his bogus voter fraud claims
They concluded that the tradition of not prosecuting a former president must yield to the need to protect our constitutional form of government and to ensure that the violent effort to oust them is stopped.
Law professors Alan Rozenshtein and Jed Handelsman Shugerman have come to the same conclusion.
The Justice Department didn't have enough evidence to indict Trump for his actions, according to two professors. They wrote that they had been swayed by the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump's chief of staff.
They cited Hutchinson's account of a conversation that took place moments before Trump delivered his speech, in which she said the former president ordered the removal of metal detectors.
I heard the president say "I don't care that they have weapons, they're not here to hurt me" Hutchinson explained that Trump was annoyed by the empty space in the crowd and wanted to let his people in. He was angry that we weren't allowing people with weapons through the mags.
The First Amendment protects political speech that is based on a lie, as long as it is not offensive.
The landmark case in which the Supreme Court held that the government could only criminalize speech if it was directed to inciting or producing was one of the reasons they were skeptical.
They wrote that Hutchinson's account of Trump's demand to remove the magnetometers undermines that position, serving as an additional proof of intent and context, and a material act to increase the likelihood of violence.
The testimony of Hutchinson could be used to prosecute Trump for inciting or encouraging a riot.
There are other people who were influenced by Hutchinson.
During the investigation of President Bill Clinton, Solomon Wisenberg, a former deputy independent counsel under Ken Starr, said that Hutchinson's testimony was the "smoking gun" that made a case for Trump's criminal culpability on seditious conspiracy charges.
John Dean, the former White House counsel to Richard Nixon, seems to have been swayed by the testimony of two people.
After hearing Van Tatenhove and Ayres testify, Dean predicted that Trump was in trouble.
Dean said on CNN that a criminal case would come out of the hearings. The Department of Justice can't take a lot of this evidence and use it. A lot of these people are going to be in front of a grand jury.
This week, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow reported that Garland had issued a memo in May extending a 2020 policy that required federal investigators to obtain written approval from the attorney general for any investigations into a presidential candidate or their staff. Trump has said that he will run for president again in 2024, but he hasn't officially announced his candidacy.
The DOJ did not respond to the question of whether the Garland memo applies to Trump.
Since the committee began its latest round of hearings, there have been some signs that the inquiry may be expanded. The department renewed an earlier request for the panel's interview transcripts, and issued several new subpoenas in relation to its inquiry into the potentially fraudulent effort to use fake pro- Trump electors to prevent certification of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory. The home of a former DOJ official was searched by federal agents last month.
In Georgia, the Fulton County District Attorney has empaneled a special grand jury and subpoenaed several Trump advisers, including his attorney Rudy Giuliani. Last week, she told Yahoo News that she might call Trump to testify.
The real question isn't whether the evidence presented is enough to indict Trump, but whether it's enough to merit a criminal investigation of the former president She said there was more than enough evidence to support that.
It was aimed at the very heart of our democracy.
The seriousness of the offense is one of the factors the Justice Department instructs prosecutors to consider.
She said that she was not sure if attempting to destroy American democracy was a more serious offense than using or selling drugs.
If the Justice Department fails to prosecute Trump, the most powerful person in the country, for crimes that are meant to destroy our democratic system of government, it will send a terrible and possibly even fatal message.
A social contract is what the criminal justice system in a democratic system is. She said that everyone agreed that the laws would be enforced fairly as to everyone. When the president of the United States isn't charged for the most serious thing you can imagine someone doing, that idea is seriously undermined.
The rioters were able to get to the office of the vice president. You can see how in this explainer.
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