January 6 panel claims former president Donald Trump engaged in 'criminal conspiracy'

Former US president Donald Trump. Photo / AP

The House Committee investigating the US Capitol insurrection said today that its evidence shows former President Donald Trump and his associates engaged in a "criminal conspiracy" to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the US Presidential election, spread false information about it and pressured state officials to overturn the results.

The committee made the claims in a filing today (Wednesday night local time) in response to a lawsuit by Trump adviser John Eastman. Eastman, a lawyer who was consulting with Trump as he attempted to overturn the election, is trying to withhold documents from the committee as it investigates the January 6, 2021, insurrection. The committee argued there is a legal exception allowing the disclosure of communications regarding ongoing or future crimes.

"The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the [former] president and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States," the committee wrote in a filing submitted in the US District Court in the Central District of California.

The 221-page filing marks the committee's most formal effort to link the former president to a federal crime, though the actual import of the filing is not clear since lawmakers do not have the power to bring charges on their own and can only make a referral to the Justice Department. The department has been investigating last year's riot, but has not given any indication that it is considering seeking charges against Trump.

The brief filed today was in an effort by the committee to refute attorney-client privilege claims made by Eastman in order to withhold records from congressional investigators.

"The Select Committee is not conducting a criminal investigation," Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee's Democratic chairman, said in a statement. "But, as the judge noted at a previous hearing, Dr Eastman's privilege claims raise the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege applies in this situation."

The filing also details exhibits from the committee's interviews with several top Trump aides and even former Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short.

The committee also said it found evidence that Trump sought to obstruct an official proceeding — in this case, the certification of the results — by trying to strongarm Pence to delay the proceedings so there would be additional time to "manipulate" the results.

"The evidence supports an inference that President Trump and members of his campaign knew he had not won enough legitimate state electoral votes to be declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential election during the January 6 Joint Session of Congress, but the President nevertheless sought to use the Vice President to manipulate the results in his favour," the filing states.