The House Jan. 6 committee’s referral of former President Donald J. Trump to the Justice Department for prosecution violates the U.S. Constitution, according to Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz.
The committee, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans, voted unanimously to refer Trump for four criminal charges during its last hearing on Dec. 19, including one charge that would prevent him from ever holding office again.
“In my view, it’s clearly unconstitutional,” Dershowitz told Just the News on Monday. “Article One limits the power of Congress through legislative actions. This is not a legislative action, naming a specific individual and referring them to the Justice Department. It’s not legislative and it tramples on the authority of the executive branch.”
The charges the committee recommended included insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, making a false statement to the federal government, and conspiracy to defraud the federal government.
Under U.S. law, “whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
As of yet, no one has been charged with insurrection in relation to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, though some defendants have been convicted of or are facing seditious conspiracy charges.
According to Dershowitz, the 14th Amendment does allow for Congress to act against an individual if that person was engaged in an insurrection or rebellion like the Civil War, but the committee did not act under that provision.
Adding that it was his belief that the Justice Department would likely accept and then ignore the referrals, the lawyer noted: “Remember, they now have a special counsel. They have the ability to investigate. They have a much higher standard of prosecution than Congress does. So, they will politely ignore what Congress has said.”
Trump Responds
Following Monday’s hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 committee, explained the panel’s reasoning for making the referrals.
“Our criminal referrals were based on the gravity of the offense, the centrality of the actors, and the evidence we had available to us. There were undoubtedly other people involved, but we were stymied by virtue of a lot of people refusing to come and testify, refusing to give us the information they had, or taking the Fifth Amendment. So, we chose to advance the names of people where we felt certain that there was abundant evidence that they had participated in crimes.”
Trump, however, dismissed the charges in the criminal referral as “fake” and an attempt to keep him from running for president again in 2024.
“The people understand that the Democratic Bureau of Investigation, the DBI, is out to keep me from running for president because they know I’ll win and that this whole business of prosecuting me is just like impeachment was—a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party,” he said in a statement shared
via zerohedge