--- title: Trump Criminal Referral From Congress Would Be Historic description: No former president has ever been the subject of a criminal referral from Congress. Richard Nixon didn't face such a move after resigning. canonical: https://time.com/6241984/trump-criminal-referral-jan-6-committee-historic/ author: Brian Bennett article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-12-16T23:40:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-19T07:05:36.354Z article:section: Politics og:title: Why a Trump Criminal Referral Would Be Historic og:description: No former president has ever been the subject of a criminal referral from Congress og:url: https://time.com/6241984/trump-criminal-referral-jan-6-committee-historic/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb0fff9407dc83652/698a38f44ee262642631af5d/GettyImages-1441801365.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Former U.S. President Donald Trump Makes An Announcement At His Florida Home og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why a Trump Criminal Referral Would Be Historic twitter:description: No former president has ever been the subject of a criminal referral from Congress twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb0fff9407dc83652/698a38f44ee262642631af5d/GettyImages-1441801365.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 video:duration: 03:31 video:published: 2022-12-19 section: politics topics: congressional committee, criminal referral, Jan. 6 investigation, election overturn, Justice Department, final report, accountability, roll call vote genre: news, political proceeding tones: formal, serious, measured, procedural emotions: seriousness (high), resolve (medium), solemnity (medium) sentiment: neutral audience: news consumers, political observers, legal professionals, policy followers people: Donald Trump, Ms. Cheney, Ms. Lofgren, Mr. Schiff, Mr. Aguilar, Mrs. Murphy, Mr. Raskin, Mrs. Luria, Mr. Kinzinger, Mr. Chairman organizations: House Jan. 6 committee, United States Department of Justice, Capitol Police, U.S. House of Representatives content_suitability: politics [00:00-03:31]; crime [00:00-01:00] transcript_source: automatic transcription transcript_reviewed: not applicable ---  # Why a Trump Criminal Referral by the Jan. 6 Committee Would Be Historic > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Newsletters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME publishes seven free email newsletters, written and edited by TIME journalists, reaching more than 1.1 million engaged readers. TIME has reported on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world since 1923, and its newsletters bring that same authority directly to the inbox. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=e0cddca4-e7dd-4e2e-9b7e-947db38d952a&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Trump Should Be Prosecuted, Jan. 6 Committee Declares in Historic Criminal Referral [Watch (HLS stream): Trump Should Be Prosecuted, Jan. 6 Committee Declares in Historic Criminal Referral](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/T5T0oZ1h.m3u8) (3:31)  _Published 2022-12-19. The House Jan. 6 committee voted on Monday to refer criminal charges against Donald Trump to the Justice Department for trying to overturn the 2020 election, the first time a congressional committee has made such a declaration against a former President. The nine-member, bipartisan committee unanimously agreed that there was enough evidence for the department to pursue at least four charges: obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government, make false statements, and assisting an insurrection._ Description, summary, key points, chapters, key quotes, questions and transcript, where present, were produced automatically from the video or its captions and were not reviewed. ## Summary The House Jan. 6 committee holds a recorded vote to approve its final report and criminal referrals concerning Donald Trump and others. Committee members explain that the evidence leads them to recommend prosecution, arguing that ringleaders should not escape accountability while foot soldiers face jail. The nine members vote unanimously in favor, and the session closes with procedural motions and the committee adjourning. ## Key points - The committee votes to favorably report its final report to the House, including legislative recommendations and criminal referrals of Donald T. Trump and others. (01:00) - Committee members say the gravity of the offense, severity of actual harm, and offender's centrality to the scheme compel the referrals. (00:00) - A member argues the justice system should not let foot soldiers go to jail while masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass. (00:17) - The chairman is directed to transmit relevant select committee records to the Department of Justice in furtherance of the criminal referrals. (00:45) - A member states the committee understands the magnitude of the crime against democracy described in its report. (00:26) - Members vote by roll call, with the chair voting aye, and the motion passes nine ayes to zero nos. (02:39) - Staff is authorized to make necessary technical or conforming changes to the report to reflect the committee's actions. (02:39) ## Chapters - [00:00 to 00:17] Rationale for criminal referrals. A committee member explains the criteria of gravity, harm, and centrality that justify the referrals. - [00:17 to 00:45] Accountability for ringleaders. Members state that masterminds should not escape consequences while lower-level participants face jail, and that the facts lead to the referrals. - [00:45 to 01:15] Motions to transmit records and report. Unanimous consent is requested to send records to the Justice Department and a motion is made to report the final report to the House. - [01:15 to 02:39] Recorded roll call vote. Members are called one by one and vote aye on the motion to favorably report the final report. - [02:39 to 03:31] Closing procedures and adjournment. The vote is reported as nine to zero, staff is authorized for technical changes, and the committee adjourns. ## Key quotes - [00:17] Committee member: "Ours is not a system of justice where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass." - [00:26] Committee member: "But we have gone where the facts and the law lead us, and inescapably, they lead us here." - [00:26] Committee member: "we understand the gravity of each and every referral we are making today" ## Questions this video answers - What action did the committee take on its final report? [01:00] - Why does the committee say it is recommending these referrals? [00:00] - Who did the committee recommend for criminal referral? [01:00] - How did members vote on the motion to report the final report? [02:39] - What will happen to the committee's records? [00:45] ## Content suitability - politics [00:00-03:31]: Entire video concerns a criminal referral of a former President over efforts to overturn the 2020 election. - crime [00:00-01:00]: Discusses criminal charges and referrals for obstruction, conspiracy to defraud, false statements, and assisting an insurrection.  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is a former senior White House correspondent at TIME. Dec 16, 2022 11:40 PM UTC The House Jan. 6 committee voted on Monday to refer criminal charges against Donald Trump to the Justice Department for trying to overturn the 2020 election, the first time a congressional committee has made such a declaration against a former President. The nine-member, bipartisan committee unanimously agreed that there was enough evidence for the department to pursue at least four charges: obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government, make false statements, and assisting an insurrection.  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is a former senior White House correspondent at TIME. Dec 16, 2022 11:40 PM UTC Donald Trump is once again poised to make history. No former president has ever been the subject of a criminal referral from Congress, and that could change early next week. The House Jan. 6 Committee is set to hold its final meeting on Monday, one in which it could vote on whether to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution for his involvement in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and encouraging the violent attempt to stop the Jan. 6 certification of Joe Biden’s election win. The referral, and the documentation supporting it, would then likely be handed to Special Counsel Jack Smith, who Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed last month to [take over](https://time.com/6235149/garland-special-counsel-trump-investigations/) criminal investigations involving Trump. It will be up to Smith to ultimately decide whether to bring charges. The expected vote to recommend prosecution of Trump would be a climax to the committee’s 18-month investigation, which involved over 1,000 interviews, the gathering of over a million documents, and 10 public [hearings](https://january6th.house.gov/legislation/hearings). The committee is also finalizing a public report that could be released as soon as next week. The committee voted in October to [subpoena](https://time.com/6221915/jan-6-hearing-vote-trump-subpeona-testify/) Trump to testify, but Trump refused to appear. The committee is also considering criminal referrals for people who allegedly helped Trump try to overturn the election results by creating fake slates of electors such as former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorney John Eastman, and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former personal attorney. The referrals would be largely symbolic, but experts say that symbolism—and the evidence behind it—can still carry a lot of weight. “Symbols are hugely important,” says Debra Perlin, the policy director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who argues a criminal referral of Trump would “frame a discussion” around the deadly attack on the Capitol and the events that preceded it. “It can help prevent and counteract misinformation and disinformation in the society that we thrive in,” Perlin says, “because you can point to something authoritative, coming from Congress, that says that this happened, that there needs to be accountability, and that says that criminal prosecution is the path that needs to be taken moving forward.” If the Committee votes to send criminal referrals, it means “they figured that writing a report wasn’t enough,” says Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University and a former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Donald Trump’s “the only president to have ever tried to overturn an election,” Naftali continues. “So, yea, this is a unique referral. It’s also a unique moment in our history.” Other presidents have faced legal jeopardy from their actions while in office. But in most of those cases, the threat of prosecution did not follow them after they left office. In 1974, President Gerald Ford [famously issued a pardon](https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,908732,00.html) to his predecessor, Richard Nixon, clearing Nixon of any crimes that he might have committed against the United States as President. The pardon came after both chambers of Congress had investigated Nixon’s involvement in widespread abuses of power stemming from a break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Watergate complex by men working for his re-election campaign. No congressional committee ever issued a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for Nixon. Rather, the reverse occurred, as Leon Jaworski, the special prosecutor tasked with investigating Nixon, sent Congress a “[roadmap](https://www.archives.gov/research/investigations/watergate/roadmap)” laying out evidence of criminal violations Nixon was believed to have committed including bribery, perjury and obstruction of justice. Because Nixon was a sitting president, Jaworski initially believed it made more sense for Congress to move forward with impeachment proceedings, than trying to prosecute Nixon in a court of law. Facing impeachment in the House, cratering support from his fellow Republicans, and looming criminal charges from a grand jury, Nixon resigned from office before facing prosecution. A criminal referral from Congress against Trump would send a strong message to the former President and his allies ahead of the next presidential election, says Naftali. “The criminal referral of the cast of characters who tried to overturn our Constitution in 2020, those referrals are a warning, I think, to people around Donald Trump today: ‘Don’t do this again. Don’t try this again. There will be consequences,’” Naftali says. When asked for a response to the potential criminal referrals, the Trump campaign replied by belittling the committee’s work. “The January 6th un-Select Committee held show trials by Never-Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, in a statement. “This kangaroo court has been nothing more than a Hollywood executive’s vanity documentary project that insults Americans’ intelligence and makes a mockery of our democracy.” The Democratic-led House already impeached Trump twice: once for trying to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch a politically motivated investigation into Joe Biden, and a second time for his role in encouraging the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol Building. After both impeachments, the Senate voted to acquit Trump. ## “The Mount Rushmore of Election Denial Criminality” Norm Eisen, a senior fellow in governance studies at The Brookings Institution, was counsel to the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, and considers that impeachment report to have been similar to a criminal referral because it included a 30-page analysis of why Trump and those around him had broken the law during his July 2019 call to Zelensky. Eisen believes the Jan. 6th committee would be on solid ground with a criminal referral of Trump, as they have helped uncover plenty of evidence of the former President’s alleged role in two main criminal acts: conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to use force to prevent an official proceeding. The committee has shown that Trump played an active role in trying to drum up 11,780 votes that did not exist in support of him in Georgia. He also was working with others to create slates of fake electors to send to Congress. And the committee brought to light a phone call in which Trump and Eastman pushed Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to support the effort to create fake electoral slates. Also, U.S. District Judge David Carter ruled in March that Trump “corruptly attempted to obstruct” the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral win on Jan. 6 and, in an order issued in October, said that emails from Eastman show that Trump was part of “a conspiracy to defraud the United States” with unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. Eisen says that there’s enough there for the committee to refer Trump for charges on a conspiracy to defraud the United States, under [18 U.S.C. 371](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371) in the federal criminal code. In addition, Eisen believes that Trump’s actions just ahead of the Capitol attack, in which he encouraged a crowd he knew was armed to go to the Capitol building to stop the certification of election results, may have violated 18\. U.S.C. 1512, by being part of a conspiracy to use force to prevent an official proceeding. Those who helped Trump allegedly violate the law could also face criminal referrals, Eisen says. “The Mount Rushmore of election denial criminality” is Trump, the “inside coup lawyer” Jeffrey Clark, the “outside coup lawyer John Eastman” and Meadows, “whose fingerprints are all over this,” says Eisen. Perlin, a legal expert on the rule of law and separation of powers, says that the committee, in addition to voting on criminal referrals, should also make public all of the information it has collected, as it isn’t only of interest to prosecutors. “It will also help civil society and experts who are going to be picking up the baton, along with prosecutors, to ensure that our democracy is protected going forward and that there is accountability ensured for everybody who tried to undermine our democracy,” she says. Together, the committee’s referrals and report are expected to offer a detailed description of how Trump and those around him tried to violate the Constitution and stay in office after losing the election. That alone has value as “a demonstration that our institutions still work,” Naftali says. “We live in such a divisive, noisy era and this would be a focused, clean explanation for each one of these referred individuals, reasons why Congress felt they threatened our Constitution, and I think that’s healthy.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6241984/trump-criminal-referral-jan-6-committee-historic/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6241984/trump-criminal-referral-jan-6-committee-historic/"},"headline":"Why a Trump Criminal Referral by the Jan. 6 Committee Would Be Historic","datePublished":"2022-12-16T23:40:05.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-19T07:05:36.354Z","description":"The move by the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee to formally urge the Department of Justice pursue criminal charges against a former President would be \"a unique moment in our history.”","url":"https://time.com/6241984/trump-criminal-referral-jan-6-committee-historic/","keywords":["Donald Trump","Congress","January 6"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb0fff9407dc83652/698a38f44ee262642631af5d/GettyImages-1441801365.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Brian Bennett","jobTitle":"Bennett is a former senior White House correspondent at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb0fff9407dc83652/698a38f44ee262642631af5d/GettyImages-1441801365.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Former U.S. President Donald Trump Makes An Announcement At His Florida Home","caption":"Former U.S. President Donald Trump Makes An Announcement At His Florida Home","creditText":"Joe Raedle—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/tag/donald-trump/","name":"Donald Trump"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6241984/trump-criminal-referral-jan-6-committee-historic/","name":"Why a Trump Criminal Referral by the Jan. 6 Committee Would Be Historic"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Trump Should Be Prosecuted, Jan. 6 Committee Declares in Historic Criminal Referral","description":"The House Jan. 6 committee voted on Monday to refer criminal charges against Donald Trump to the Justice Department for trying to overturn the 2020 election, the first time a congressional committee has made such a declaration against a former President. 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