WASHINGTON -- The Senate in an impeachment trial acquitted former President Donald Trump last year of inciting the Capitol insurrection. Neither Trump nor any of his top advisers have faced charges over the attack in a court of law.
But increasingly, lawmakers on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault are pressing Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Trump and his associates. They've been laying out possible crimes in at least one court filing and openly discussing others, all related to that day's attack by Trump supporters looking to disrupt Congress' formal certification of his reelection defeat.
After floating possible crimes for several months, lawmakers on the panel put them on paper for the first time in a March court filing. The filing was in response to a lawsuit from John Eastman, a lawyer and law professor who was consulting with Trump while attempting to overturn the election and who tried to withhold documents from the committee.
The committee argued that it has evidence supporting the idea that Trump, Eastman and other allies of the former president "entered into an agreement to defraud the United States." The panel says Trump and his allies interfered with the election certification process, disseminated misinformation about election fraud and pressured state and federal officials to assist in that effort.
In ordering Eastman to turn over the materials, U.S. District Judge David Carter wrote that the court "finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021."
In the filing, the committee argued that Trump either attempted or succeeded at obstructing, influencing or impeding the ceremonial process on Jan. 6 and "did so corruptly" by pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results as he presided over the session. Pence declined to do so.
"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 favor," the committee wrote.
The committee has also floated a charge of "common law fraud," or falsely representing facts with the knowledge that they are false. Trump embarked on a campaign to convince the public and federal judges that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that he, not Biden, won the Electoral College tally. Election officials and courts across the country, along with Trump's attorney general, rejected those claims.
As an example of such fraud, the committee noted in the Eastman filing that a Justice Department official told Trump directly that a Facebook video posted by his campaign "purporting to show Georgia officials pulling suitcases of ballots from under a table" was false, yet the campaign continued to run it. Georgia officials also repeatedly denied the claim.
"The president continued to rely on this allegation in his efforts to overturn the results of the election," the committee said.
Leaders of the House panel suggested earlier this year that they believe Trump could also be liable for "dereliction of duty," or inaction as his supporters violently broke the windows and doors of the U.S. Capitol.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the committee chairman, said in January that "the harm that I see is the president of the United States seeing the Capitol of the United States under siege by people he sent to the Capitol and did nothing during that time."
The committee's vice chairwoman, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, noted that same month that the panel knows from "firsthand testimony" that Trump watched the attack happen on television. "We know that he did not walk the very few steps to the White House briefing room, get on camera immediately, and tell the people to stop and go home," she said.
Cheney said it was hard "imagine a more significant and more serious dereliction of duty" than Trump's failure to quell the insurrection.
While the committee hasn't floated specifics, it has created an internal task force to investigate financing for the massive rally on the National Mall the morning of Jan. 6 and any donors who might have backed transportation or other costs that could have helped foster the violence.
Asked earlier this year on CNN if they have any evidence of financial fraud, Thompson said members of the committee "have some concerns, but we have not made those concerns public at this point."
"We do think it's highly concerning on our part that people raised monies for one activity, and we can't find the money being spent for that particular activity," Thompson said. "So, we will continue to look at it. And the financing is one of those things that we will continue to look at very closely."
More than 775 rioters have been arrested for crimes related to the insurrection.
Congress has no authority to prosecute Trump and other top officials, but it can send so-called criminal referrals to the Justice Department.
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe Biden as President in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol has identified a roughly eight-hour gap in official records of then-President Donald Trump's phone calls as the violence unfolded and his supporters stormed the building, according to a person familiar with the probe. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a meeting of the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force at the Justice Department, Thursday, March 10, 2022 in Washington. (Kevin Lamarque, Pool via AP)