January 6th Committee appears to give away that it believes DOJ will prosecute Donald Trump
For months, the January 6th Committee has been publicly floating the idea of ultimately making a criminal referral to the DOJ against Donald Trump at the end of its public hearings. All along, Palmer Report has tried to spell out the obvious implications of this: if the committee makes such a referral, it’ll be an attempt at forcing the DOJ to prosecute Trump. If the committee ends up not making a referral, it would be specifically because it’s concluded that the DOJ is already planning to prosecute Trump anyway, and such a referral could risk making that prosecution look partisan.
Last week multiple major news outlets reported that the DOJ has in fact had a January 6th grand jury targeting Trump world for at least two months. It’s now fairly obvious that the DOJ is going to indict numerous people in Trump world in an effort at getting them to flip on Trump, so it can prosecute Trump with cooperating witnesses in hand.
This isn’t just our take on the situation; it now appears the January 6th Committee sees things the same way. Politico is reporting today that the committee is now leaning toward not making a criminal referral against Trump. The article itself isn’t worth much. It mainly just emphasizes quotes from committee members who are expressing skepticism as to whether a criminal referral against Trump is needed, while downplaying or ignoring those committee members who have previously made statements leaning in favor of a criminal referral.
The article also conveniently ignores the major bombshell news that the DOJ has a confirmed grand jury targeting Trump world. After all, the article is intended to give readers the doomsday impression that the January 6th Committee has decided to let Trump get off the hook. Articles that suggest Trump will ‘get away with it all’ are near-guaranteed to go viral as audiences seethe with outrage over the supposed bad news, which is why such articles are constructed and published to begin with.
But this absurdly constructed Politico article aside, it does appear the January 6th Committee is now at least incrementally shifting toward not sending the DOJ a criminal referral against Donald Trump. As we’ve explained from the very start – and as is obvious to anyone who applies five seconds of critical thought to the situation – if the committee decides not to make a criminal referral it’ll be because it’s concluded that the DOJ is going to prosecute Trump anyway. Given the timing, it’s plainly obvious that the committee’s shifting mindset is a direct result of the news that the DOJ already has a grand jury targeting Trump world for January 6th.
