CAPITOL INSURRECTION

Jury convicts 4 Oath Keepers of seditious conspiracy for roles in Jan. 6 Capitol attack

Sarah N. Lynch / Reuters — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 20:34:29 GMT

WASHINGTON — A jury on Monday, Jan. 23, convicted four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group of seditious conspiracy, handing the Justice Department another major victory in its quest to prosecute supporters of then-President Donald Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The verdict marks the end of the second major sedition trial against members of the extremist group, who were among the hundreds who attacked the Capitol in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden's victory over Trump, a Republican, in the 2020 presidential election.

The 12-member jury found Oath Keeper members David Moerschel, Joseph Hackett, Roberto Minuta and Edward Vallejo guilty of seditious conspiracy.

All four were also found guilty of other felony and obstruction charges.

Seditious conspiracy is a rarely prosecuted Civil War-era law that prohibits plotting to overthrow or destroy the government and carries up to 20 years in prison.

A jury found Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and another Florida-based leader of the group guilty of seditious conspiracy in a separate trial in November.

Three other members were found not guilty of that charge, but all five defendants in that trial were found guilty of obstructing Congress from certifying the election.

Prosecutors have brought criminal charges against more than 950 people following the assault. Four people died during the chaos, and five police officers died of various causes after the attack.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta split the Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy case into two separate trials due to space limitations and the risks of COVID-19 contagion.

In both trials, Rhodes' fiery rhetoric and inflammatory statements about "civil war" and "bloody war" took center stage, with prosecutors saying the other members were inspired to carry out his vision.

A third seditious conspiracy trial against five members of the Proud Boys, another right-wing militant group, is ongoing.

Jurors heard testimony and evidence in the second Oath Keepers case for several weeks.

None of the four defendants played major leadership roles in the organization, and their attorneys have said there is no evidence they plotted to block the certification of the election.

On the day of the attack, Moerschel, Hackett and Minuta all entered the Capitol clad in tactical gear.

Prosecutors said Minuta, who led a group of several Oath Keepers into the Capitol and clashed violently with police, all the while screaming it was "their building."

Vallejo was accused of staying back at a hotel in Northern Virginia, where the Oath Keepers staged a "quick reaction force" that prosecutors said was equipped with firearms ready to be quickly transported into Washington.

"The defendants could not let the election stand," federal prosecutor Louis Manzo said in closing arguments on Wednesday. "They could not let Biden come to power."

The trial featured testimony from law enforcement officials and from several fellow Oath Keepers who had previously pleaded guilty to other crimes in connection with the Capitol attack.

One group member, Caleb Berry, testified that "we were going to try to stop the vote count" when they decided to breach the Capitol.

Brian Ulrich, another group member who pleaded guilty previously to seditious conspiracy, told the jury he too wanted to stop the vote count, adding there was "no other reason to go into that building at that point."

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Capitol riot panel recommends charging Trump with insurrection, obstruction

Patricia Zengerle — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 16:27:59 GMT

WASHINGTON — A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Monday, Dec. 19, asked federal prosecutors to charge Donald Trump with obstruction and insurrection for his role in sparking the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.

The Democratic-led select committee asked the Justice Department to bring charges against the Republican former president, including obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States and insurrection.

The request is nonbinding, but may increase pressure on prosecutors, who are carrying out multiple investigations of Trump, to act.

Monday's meeting is likely the final public gathering of a panel that spent 18 months probing the unprecedented attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power by thousands of Trump backers, inspired by his false claims that his 2020 election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud.

"If we are to survive as a nation of laws and democracy, this can never happen again," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, the select committee's chairperson, as the meeting began.

Slamming Trump for summoning the mob to the Capitol nearly two years ago, Thompson also criticized the former president for undermining faith in the democratic system.

"If the faith is broken, so is our democracy. Donald Trump broke that faith," Thompson said.

Trump has already launched a campaign to seek the Republican nomination to run for the White House again in 2024.

The select committee's work is one of a series of investigations into the riot. Five people, including a police officer, died during or shortly after the incident and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.

"Among the most shameful of this committee's findings. was the President Trump sat in the dining room off the Oval Office, watching the violent riot at the Capitol on television," Rep. Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the committee, said.

Trump has dismissed the many investigations he faces as politically motivated. He says the Jan.6 committee, dominated by Democrats, is biased against him.

A jury has already found members of the right-wing Oath Keepers militia guilty of sedition for their role in the attack and a special counsel, Jack Smith, is leading probes into Trump's efforts to overturn his loss and his removal of classified documents from the White House.

Trump has faced a series of legal problems since leaving office. His real estate company was convicted on Dec. 6 of carrying out a 15-year-long criminal scheme to defraud tax authorities.

"The highly partisan Unselect Committee is illegally leaking confidential info to anyone that will listen," the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform before the meeting. "How much longer are Republicans, and American Patriots in general, going to allow this to happen."

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Family of deceased Capitol police officer spurns Republican leaders at ceremony

Gram Slattery and David Morgan / Reuters — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 21:30:00 GMT

WASHINGTON — The mother and brother of police officer Brian Sicknick, who died in the days following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, declined to shake the hand of top Republicans Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell at a medal ceremony on Tuesday.

After greeting top Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer at the award ceremony held in the Capitol Building, Gladys and Ken Sicknick walked by McCarthy and McConnell, the top Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively, without acknowledging them. McConnell had reached out his hand, in an apparent handshake attempt.

In video broadcast of the event, at least two police officials could be seen similarly spurning McConnell and McCarthy. Reuters could not immediately identify them, but Washington's district police force as well as the specialized police force in charge of security at the Capitol building were present. Representatives of other law enforcement agencies were also at the ceremony.

The decision by multiple attendees to spurn Republican leaders illustrates how emotions are still running high over the 2021 attack on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, who initially declined to call off the rioters.

The support some Republicans gave to the rioters became a major campaign issue in the 2022 midterm elections, and will likely remain an issue in the 2024 presidential race.

"They're just two-faced," Gladys Sicknick told CNN.

"I'm just tired of them standing there and saying how wonderful the Capitol Police is and then they turn around and ... go down to Mar-a-Lago and kiss his (Trump's) ring and come back and stand here and sit with — it just, it just hurts."

Washington's chief medical examiner ruled that Sicknick died of natural causes following multiple strokes after the attack on the Capitol.

Asked about the incident on Tuesday, McConnell did not address the ceremony directly.

"We admire and respect them. They laid their lives on the line. And that's why we gave a gold medal today to the heroes of January 6th," he told reporters.

McCarthy's office did not immediately respond to a comment request on Tuesday.

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Oath Keepers founder convicted of sedition in Capitol attack plot

Sarah N. Lynch / Reuters — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 23:36:21 GMT

WASHINGTON — Stewart Rhodes, founder of the right-wing Oath Keepers militia group, was found guilty on Tuesday, Nov. 29, of seditious conspiracy for last year's attack on the U.S. Capitol in a failed bid to overturn then-President Donald Trump's 2020 election loss — an important victory for the Justice Department.

The verdicts against Rhodes and four co-defendants, after three days of deliberations by the 12-member jury, came in the highest-profile trial so far to emerge from the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, with other high-profile trials due to begin next month.

Rhodes, a Yale Law ��-educated former Army paratrooper and disbarred attorney, was accused by prosecutors during an eight-week trial of fomenting a plot to use force to try to block Congress from certifying Democratic President Joe Biden's election victory over Trump, a Republican. Rhodes was convicted on three counts and acquitted on two.

One of his co-defendants, Kelly Meggs, was also found guilty of seditious conspiracy while the three others — Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell — were acquitted of that charge. All five defendants were convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding — the congressional certification of the election results — with mixed verdicts on a handful of other charges.

The charges of seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding each carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta presided over the trial.

Rhodes, who wears an eye patch after accidentally shooting himself in the face with his own gun, is one of the most prominent defendants of the roughly 900 charged so far in connection with the attack. Meggs, who heads the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers, was the only defendant besides Rhodes in this trial who played a leadership role in the organization.

Rhodes in 2009 founded the Oath Keepers, a militia group whose members include current and retired U.S. military personnel, law enforcement officers and first responders. Its members have showed up, often heavily armed, at protests and political events around the United States including the racial justice demonstrations following the murder of a Black man named George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.

'Mixed bag'

Rhodes' lawyer Ed Tarpley called the verdicts in the trial "a mixed bag."

"We are grateful for the not guilty verdicts received, we are disappointed in the guilty verdicts," Tarpley told reporters outside court. "There was no evidence introduced to indicate there was a plan to attack the Capitol."

Prosecutors during the trial said Rhodes and his co-defendants planned to use force to prevent Congress from formally certifying Biden's election victory. Meggs, Watkins and Harrelson all entered the Capitol clad in tactical gear.

The defendants was were accused of creating a "quick reaction force" that prosecutors said positioned at a nearby Virginia hotel and was equipped with firearms that could be quickly transported into Washington if summoned.

Fifty witnesses testified during the trial. Rhodes and two of his co-defendants testified in their own defense. They denied plotting any attack or seeking to block Congress from certifying the election results, though Watkins admitted to impeding police officers protecting the Capitol.

Rhodes told the jury he had no plan to storm the Capitol and did not learn that some of his fellow Oath Keepers had breached the building until after the riot had ended.

Prosecutors during cross-examination sought to paint Rhodes as a liar, showing him page after page of his inflammatory text messages, videos, photos and audio recordings. These included Rhodes lamenting about not bringing rifles to Washington on Jan. 6 and saying he could have hanged U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat reviled by the right, from a lamppost.

Watkins, a transgender woman who fled the U.S. Army after being confronted with homophobic slurs, and Caldwell, a disabled U.S. Navy veteran, also chose to testify.

Watkins admitted to having "criminal liability" for impeding police officers inside the Capitol and apologized. At the same time, Watkins denied having any plan to storm the building, describing being "swept up" just as enthusiastic shoppers behave on "Black Friday" when they rush into stores to purchase discount-price holiday gifts like TVs.

Caldwell, who like Rhodes did not enter the Capitol building and never formally joined the Oath Keepers, tried to downplay some of the inflammatory texts he sent in connection with the attack. Caldwell said some of the lines were adapted from or inspired by movies such as "The Princess Bride" and cartoons such as Bugs Bunny.

Four other Oath Keepers members charged with seditious conspiracy are due to go to trial in December. Members of another right-wing group called the Proud Boys, including its former chairman Enrique Tarrio, also are due to head to trial on seditious conspiracy charges in December.

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Wife of Justice Clarence Thomas meets with Capitol riot committee

Reuters — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 17:09:55 GMT

WASHINGTON — Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, met on Thursday, Sept. 29, with the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Thomas was seen going into the meeting room in a House office building that is used by the House of Representatives Select Committee for its interviews. The panel's chairperson, Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, had told reporters on Wednesday that Thomas would appear before the panel this week.

Thomas is active in conservative political circles and said she attended a rally held by former President Donald Trump before thousands of his supporters stormed the Capitol. Trump made a fiery speech at the rally repeating his unfounded allegations that his election defeat was due to widespread fraud and urged the crowd to march on Congress.

She declined to respond to a reporter's question as she walked in.

A committee spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The committee had been scheduled to hold a public hearing on Wednesday, but postponed it because of the threat to Florida by powerful Hurricane Ian. Read full story The postponement raised the possibility that Thomas' testimony could be included in the next public hearing.

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Jan. 6 panel turns attention to Pence at Thursday's hearing

Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan / Reuters — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 11:23:23 GMT

WASHINGTON — The congressional committee investigating last year's deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol turns its attention on Thursday to then-President Donald Trump's multiple attempts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

The House of Representatives Select Committee has scheduled a hearing for noon Central, looking at efforts by Trump and some of his associates to convince Pence not to formally certify Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the November 2020 presidential election.

Thousands of Trump supporters — many chanting "Hang Mike Pence" — marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Pence met with lawmakers for what is normally a routine ceremony to certify the election. Some erected a gallows they said was intended for Pence.

The certification had become a focus for Trump, who saw it as a last-ditch chance to retain the presidency despite being defeated. His supporters flocked to Washington to rally with Trump, who had made repeated false claims that the election was stolen through widespread voting fraud.

Thursday's hearing will feature testimony from Greg Jacob, who served as counsel to Pence, and retired U.S. Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, who was an informal adviser to the vice president.

Videotaped testimony of former Pence chief of staff Marc Short is expected to be broadcast.

The hearing is the third of at least six public hearings this month at which the nine-member, Democratic-led committee will discuss preliminary results of its nearly year-long investigation of the events up to and on Jan. 6, 2021.

Committee aides said the hearing would discuss emergence of a plan advocated by Trump associates including attorney John Eastman that the vice president could unilaterally reject certified electors from disputed states. Pence refused to accept that theory.

"It's a violation of the vice president's constitutional obligations and constitutional law," but Trump chose the path of "escalating" this violation, an aide said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, aides also said the session would look at the pressure campaign on Pence, driven by Trump. They promised new material documenting those efforts, with testimony from the witnesses in the room as well as taped testimony from some of the more than 1,000 depositions and interviews.

The committee intends to lay out a timeline of Pence's day on Jan. 6, which could detail contacts with Trump and Secret Service agents who spirited the vice president to a secure location as the crowd threatened him.

The attack on the Capitol delayed certification of the election for hours, injured more than 140 police officers and led to several deaths. More than 840 people have been arrested and charged so far.

The onslaught marked the only time in U.S. history that power was not passed peacefully from one president to another.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan; editing by Andy Sullivan and David Gregorio.)

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Spotlight on Trump supporters' assault on Capitol as Jan. 6 hearings begin

Patricia Zengerle / Reuters — Mon, 06 Jun 2022 11:58:44 GMT

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Congress's probe of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters trying to overturn his election defeat enters a new phase this week with hearings meant to refocus attention on the violence and those who planned it.

The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Jan. 6 will attempt to reverse Republican efforts to downplay or deny the violence of the day, with five months to go until Nov. 8 midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress for the next two years.

"This was a coup organized by the president against the vice president and against the Congress in order to overturn the 2020 presidential election," Representative Jamie Raskin, one of the Democratic members of the nine-member committee, said in a recent interview.

"We're going to tell the whole story of everything that happened. There was a violent insurrection and an attempted coup and we were saved by (then-Vice President) Mike Pence's refusal to go along with that plan," Raskin said.

The panel of seven Democrats and two Republicans has spent much of the past year investigating the events preceding and driving the attack by thousands of Trump loyalists, who stormed the building in a failed bid to prevent Congress from formally certifying his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

The committee has not yet said what witnesses it will call at its Thursday evening hearing, a prime time spot intended to capture the attention of as many Americans as possible. Five more hearings are expected in the next two weeks.

The committee said in a statement the hearings would "provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power."

"It will be a combination of exhibits, staff testimony, outside witnesses," the committee's chairperson, Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, recently told reporters.

Prospects for success are not clear, in a deeply divided country. A Washington Post-ABC News poll last month found that only 40% of Americans believe the committee is conducting a "fair and impartial" investigation of the attack, while 40% say it is not.

Many Americans are simply not paying attention, more worried about inflation, a spate of mass shootings and summer vacations than an attack 18 months ago.

CLOSED DOORS, SHIFTING NARRATIVE

The panel and its dozens of investigators have conducted more than 1,000 depositions and interviews and collected more than 140,000 documents.

The investigation has focused on efforts by Trump and associates to promote his false election claims, with committee members contending that the fate of American democracy is at stake.

"People are going to be absolutely surprised how much was known," Denver Riggleman, a Republican former congressman who worked as an adviser to the committee said on CNN on Sunday. "When you look at the totality of the evidence, it's pretty apparent that at some point President Trump knew what was going on."

Some congressional Republicans condemned Trump in the first days after the attack, but since then almost all of shifted their tone. Members of Congress have refused to cooperate and disputed accounts of the riot, despite thousands of photographs and videos.

Republican Representative Andrew Clyde, who helped barricade the doors of the House chamber against the mob, said the Trump supporters who stormed the building behaved "in an orderly fashion."

The Republican National Committee called the assault "legitimate political discourse."

Four people died the day of the attack, one fatally shot by police and the others of natural causes. More than 100 police officers were injured, and one died the next day. Four officers later died by suicide. The Capitol sustained millions of dollars in damage.

Trump, who is publicly flirting with another White House run in 2024, has denied wrongdoing and accused the committee of engaging in a political attack. He has leveled harsh criticism particularly at Representative Liz Cheney, the panel's Republican vice chairperson, as she runs for re-election.

Representative Adam Kinzinger, the panel's other Republican member, is retiring from Congress.

Every Republican House leader voted to overturn 2020 election results in the hours after the riot. Cheney - the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney - was removed from Republican leadership for criticizing Trump.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, who refused to comply with a committee subpoena, called the committee invalid, for reasons including having too few members and lacking a formal Republican "ranking member."

The June sessions will not be the committee's first public hearings. The panel held one last July, at which police officers described being beaten, threatened and taunted with racial insults as they faced the worst attack on the seat of the U.S. government in more than two centuries.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; additional reporting by Richard Cowan; editing by Scott Malone.)

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Trump attempt at a coup to be a focus of U.S. House hearings, lawmaker Raskin says

Richard Cowan / Reuters — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 11:38:22 GMT

WASHINGTON — Then-President Donald Trump attempted a coup on Jan. 6, 2021, and that will be a centerpiece of committee hearings in Congress next month, said Democrat Jamie Raskin, a committee member who led the prosecution of Trump's second impeachment.

On that day in 2021, Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building, encouraged by the Republican president in a speech outside the White House to protest formal congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden's victory over Trump in a November 2020 election.

"This was a coup organized by the president against the vice president and against the Congress in order to overturn the 2020 presidential election," Raskin said in an interview with Reuters, National Public Radio and The Guardian newspaper, when asked what he has learned so far from the committee's probe.

U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, who chairs the special House of Representatives committee organized by Democrats to look into events leading up to the Jan. 6 assault, has told reporters he expects public hearings to resume in May.

It was unclear whether Raskin, during the interview, was expressing only his thoughts or the thinking also of fellow lawmakers serving on the special committee made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans.

In July 2021, a new book said senior uniformed military leaders had been concerned about a potential coup, but in a statement then Trump said he had never threatened or spoken to anyone about a coup.

Shortly after organizing last year, the House panel held an initial hearing with testimony from four police officers who said they were beaten and taunted with racial insults as they tried to defend the Capitol from attackers.

The violence capped months of Trump arguing the election had been stolen from him through massive voter fraud, a claim he still asserts despite its rejection by numerous court rulings, Trump's own Justice Department and recounts sanctioned by his fellow Republicans.

'TO SEIZE THE PRESIDENCY'

Raskin said the hearings will lay out for the public the steps the former president and his associates took to try to stay in power despite a clear-cut defeat.

Had the rioters succeeded in preventing the certification, Raskin said, Trump "was prepared to seize the presidency" and likely declare martial law.

He said the committee had yet to decide whether to try to seek testimony from Trump or Pence. Every four years, the vice president is charged with overseeing the formal count in Congress of presidential elections.

Pence rejected pleas to set aside the November 2020 result, which would have paved the way for the House of Representatives to in effect conduct a second election, with Republicans holding an advantage that could have installed Trump for a second term.

The attack left four people dead on Jan. 6. One Capitol Police officer who fought with rioters died the next day. About 800 people have been charged with crimes relating to the attack.

The House panel has collected more than 100,000 documents, with investigators conducting more than 800 interviews, according to lawmakers.

"We don't have a lot of experience with coups in our own country and we think of a coup as something that takes place against a president," Raskin said.

But Jan. 6, 2021, was different, he said, because it did not involve the military or other faction attacking the president.

"It's what the political scientists call a self-coup ... it's a president fearful of defeat, overthrowing the constitutional process," Raskin said.

The House of Representatives twice impeached Trump, the second time following the Capitol assault. The U.S. Senate acquitted Trump both times. At political rallies since then, the former president has dropped hints he might run again in 2024.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; editing by Howard Goller.)

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Report: White House logs show over 7-hour gap in Trump calls on Jan. 6

Reuters — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 12:31:39 GMT

WASHINGTON — White House records show a gap of more than seven hours in former President Donald Trump's official phone calls the day of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, The Washington Post and CBS reported on Tuesday.

Logs turned over to the House panel investigating the attack showed no calls placed to or by Trump between 11:17 a.m. and 6:54 p.m. while his supporters violently rioted at the Capitol as lawmakers were set to certify Trump's 2020 election loss, the news outlets reported.

The 11 pages of records turned over to lawmakers showed Trump talked to at least eight people by phone before the gap and 11 afterward, the Post and CBS said.

Representatives for the committee and Trump could not be immediately reached for comment on the report.

Extensive public reporting also cites multiple conversations Trump had on Jan. 6 with allies and lawmakers, prompting lawmakers to probe whether he communicated that day through unofficial back channels, the report said, citing two people familiar with the congressional investigation.

House leader Kevin McCarthy last year described talking to his fellow Republican during the rioting, saying he urged the president to call off his supporters and accept his defeat.

"I was very clear with the president when I called him,” McCarthy told CBS at the time. "This has to stop, and he has to go to the American public and tell them to stop this."

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that congressional investigators along with federal prosecutors are focusing on Trump's Dec. 19, 2020, Tweet in which he urged supporters to go to Washington on Jan. 6, saying it "will be wild."

The House panel on Monday voted unanimously to seek "contempt of Congress" charges against Peter Navarro, a former trade adviser to Trump, and Daniel Scavino, who was a Trump's deputy chief of staff.

(Writing by Susan Heavey; editing by Doina Chiacu and Mark Porter.)

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U.S. Capitol riot panel says Trump may have engaged in 'criminal conspiracy'

Jan Wolfe and Patricia Zengerle / Reuters — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 13:31:00 GMT

WASHINGTON — The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday said former President Donald Trump may have engaged in criminal conduct in his bid to overturn his election defeat.

In a court filing — one of the U.S. House of Represenative's Select Committee's most detailed releases of findings yet — the panel said Trump potentially engaged in conspiracy to defraud the United States and may have obstructed an official proceeding.

The Select Committee's members have previously said they will consider passing along evidence of criminal conduct by Trump to the U.S. Justice Department. Such a move, known as a criminal referral, would be largely symbolic but would increase political pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland to charge the former president and would thrust his department into a political firestorm.

"Evidence and information available to the Committee establishes a good-faith belief that Mr. Trump and others may have engaged in criminal and/or fraudulent acts," the committee said in a court filing.

"The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States," the filing said.

The court document was filed in federal court in Los Angeles as part of the Select Committee's dispute with John Eastman, a lawyer who advised Trump on a plan to invalidate election results in key battleground states.

Eastman sued the committee in December, seeking to block a congressional subpoena requesting that he turn over thousands of emails.

Charles Burnham, a lawyer for Eastman, said in a statement on Wednesday that Eastman is abiding by his ethical duty to protect client confidences.

"The Select Committee has responded to Dr. Eastman's efforts to discharge this responsibility by accusing him of criminal conduct," Burnham said. "Because this is a civil matter, Dr. Eastman will not have the benefit of the Constitutional protections normally afforded to those accused by their government of criminal conduct. Nonetheless, we look forward to responding in due course."

Representatives of Eastman and Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump has repeatedly called the Select Committee's inquiry a politically motivated investigation.

The court filing included emails obtained by the Select Committee from the day of the Jan. 6 attack, including one where a lawyer for then-Vice President Mike Pence said no judges would endorse Eastman's legal strategy for overturning Trump's election defeat.

“Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege,” the Pence lawyer, Greg Jacob, wrote to Eastman.

“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman replied.

The committee's leaders said in a statement that "Eastman’s emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of electoral college ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power."

Attorney regulators in California said Tuesday they have been investigating Eastman and whether he acted unethically in his work for Trump. The investigation could lead to disciplinary action against Eastman, such as suspension of his law license.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; editing by Edwina Gibbs & Simon Cameron-Moore.)

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