By Jan Wolfe and Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -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.
“[E]vidence 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 court document was filed in federal court in Los Angeles as part of the U.S. House of Representative 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.
The Select Committee’s members have 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.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Edwina Gibbs)
