Throughout the last few weeks, there has been mighty speculation in the United States, as to whether or not a significant criminal charge could be coming from the work of the January 6th select committee.
The group has been holding a number of public hearings in recent weeks, laying out what they see as a vast conspiracy worthy of a big Hollywood blockbuster with C- acting. It’s a somewhat ludicrous proposition, truly, but there have long been murmurs of perhaps charging Donald Trump with some as-of-yet-undecided crime.
On Tuesday, the committee did appear to make a criminal referral of Trump to the DOJ…but it wasn’t due to the culmination of their work.
The House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 revealed that it told the Department of Justice that former President Donald Trump contacted one of its witnesses who hasn’t publicly testified yet.
“After our last hearing. President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation. A witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee, said on Tuesday.
“That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice,” she added.
As of this week’s hearing, it still doesn’t appear as though Attorney General Merrick Garland has any stomach for the sort of trouble a Trump charge could bring, and has thus far declined to take any litigious action against the former president.
