Charges loom for former president Donald Trump over Capitol riots

Donald Trump may face criminal charges for his alleged role in last year’s riots at the Capitol building in Washington.

The US House Select Committee is considering recommending the Justice Department pursue charges of insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the US government against the former president.

The committee is investigating the storming of the Capitol building which saw thousands of Trump supporters descend on Congress on January 6 last year in a failed bid to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

Trump told his supporters that he would never concede the election and urged them to “fight like hell” before they marched to the Capitol.

Five people, including a police officer, died during or shortly after the riot and more than 140 police officers were injured.

The committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, will vote on criminal referrals to the Justice Department tomorrow.

A four-strong subcommittee was set up specifically to look at whether criminal referrals should be made to the Justice Department.

It is understood to have concluded that Trump could be referred for obstruction of an official proceeding because he attempted to impede the certification of Joe Biden as president and did so with a “consciousness of wrongdoing” – as the panel has previously interpreted the intent threshold.

The former president was seen to have met the criteria of the offence since he relentlessly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral college votes for Joe Biden, despite knowing he had lost the election and had been told the plan was illegal.

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The subcommittee has also suggested Trump could also be referred for conspiracy to defraud the United States, because it says the former president violated the statute that prohibits entering into an agreement to obstruct a lawful function of government by dishonest means.

The conspiracy charge was seen to be broadly applicable because Trump’s agreement with key lawyers – and potentially even the rioters – did not need to be overt, while the plan to have Pence reject Biden’s slate electors (official state voters) with Trump electors that did not exist was deceitful.

On the social media website Truth Social yesterday, Trump wrote: “Our Country is SICK inside, very much like a person dying of Cancer. The Crooked FBI, the so-called Department of ‘Justice,’ and ‘Intelligence,’ all parts of the Democrat Party and System, is the Cancer.”

Meanwhile, a Capitol rioter who led a mob chasing a police officer during the January riot has been jailed for five years.

QAnon follower Douglas Jensen, 43, was one of the first people to storm the building and wanted to be the “poster boy of the insurrection,” according to prosecutor Emily Allen.

Around 900 people have been charged with crimes for their conduct on January 6. More than 400 of them have pleaded guilty, with sentences ranging from probation to 10 years in prison for a man who used a metal flagpole to assault an officer.

Trump is planning to run again for the presidency in 2024, but is struggling to gain his former popularity.

In recent months, an increasing number of top Trump advisors and election officials in states where Trump tried to nullify his defeat have been subpoenaed to testify before an increasing number of federal grand juries in Washington hearing evidence about events connected to the Capitol attack.

The recent subpoenas to election officials have demanded any and all communications involving Trump and the Trump campaign from June 2020 to January 2021, as part of the investigations into Trump’s so-called fake electors scheme, according to reports.