According to a new report, lawmakers investigating the Jan 6 attack are considering referring multiple Republicans to the House Ethics Committee over their refusals to comply with subpoenas.
That list includes prominent Republican names like Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy, the latter of whom may be becoming Speaker in the new Congress if he can assemble the required level of support. Other Republicans in the House who the panel has targeted with subpoenas include Mo Brooks, Scott Perry, and Andy Biggs. One of the areas of interest for the panel in which at least some of these Republicans could have provided insight is Trump’s personal state of mind around the time of the Capitol riot. Both Jordan and McCarthy were personally in touch with the then-president that day. POLITICO described referrals to the ethics panel as “likely” after committee investigators faced stonewalling among the subpoenaed Republicans. Most of those on the list have been openly and unequivocally antagonistic towards the committee’s work.
Per the report from POLITICO, the committee may also refer lawyers with involvement in Trump’s schemes after the last election for disciplinary action. One of the Trump-tied lawyers who most prominently already faced consequences for joining the fight after the last election is Rudy Giuliani, who was suspended from practicing law in New York and Washington D.C. after joining Trump’s team working on a Pennsylvania court case. Others potentially subject to these sorts of consequences include former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who attempted to gin up support at the department for pressure on Georgia officials after the last election, and John Eastman, who was involved with preparing plans by which Pence could’ve supposedly blocked the certification in Congress of the 2020 presidential election results. Giuliani, Clark, and Eastman were all also among those named in a CNN report as potential targets of criminal referrals from the panel, which members will be meeting to discuss Sunday.
A criminal referral wouldn’t force action, but it would no doubt come with substantial evidence. “I think that the rationale for doing them is when the magnitude and the gravity of the offenses compel Congress to speak about what it has found,” panel member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said. The panel is preparing to release its final report later this month, with other areas of work left that include finalizing the public release of what will apparently be the bulk of the transcripts from the many interviews the panel conducted. The ethics committee to which January 6 investigators may soon be referring these House Republicans for further investigation can sometimes take substantial action, like its recent direction for outgoing GOP Congressman Madison Cawthorn to pay some $15,000 in connection to his controversial promotion of a right-wing cryptocurrency in which he had a stake he didn’t comprehensively disclose.
