WATCH: “All that matters is winning,” Trump aide recalls
A US congressional investigation into last year’s Capitol riots says former President Donald Trump should face criminal charges, including sedition.
The Democratic-led committee voted unanimously in favor of the Justice Department to prosecute Trump.
The panel also aired a new clip of former Trump aide Hope Hicks on her warning about his legacy.
Trump supporters stormed Congress on January 6, 2021, disrupting the certification of Joe Biden as president.
Mr Trump, who denies any wrongdoing, issued a statement calling the panel a “kangaroo court”.
After spending about 18 months investigating the riot, the House select committee recommended at its final meeting Monday that Trump face four charges:
The Justice Department, whose prosecutors are already considering whether to charge Trump, should not follow a congressional committee’s referral.
While the court’s actions are largely symbolic, the president called the proposed charges a “roadmap to justice.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment Monday on the referral.
“An insurgency is a rebellion against the authority of the United States,” said Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who serves on the committee.
“It’s a serious federal crime, anchored in the Constitution itself.”
The panel’s seven Democrats and two Republicans released their 161-page preliminary executive summary on Monday.
He accused Mr. Trump of a “multi-part conspiracy” to thwart the will of voters in the run-up to the Capitol riot and during the riot itself.
The House committee has argued that Mr. Trump spread claims he knew were false about stealing the 2020 presidential election, before pressuring state officials, the Justice Department and his own vice president to help him undo his defeat. The panel accuses him of fomenting unrest in Congress in a final bid to block a peaceful transfer of power to Mr. Biden.
The full report, which runs into hundreds of pages, will be published on Wednesday.
WATCH: Capitol riots committee announces Trump reference
On Monday, the panel also released a new video of its deposition with longtime Trump aide Hope Hicks, who said she had warned Mr. Trump that by continuing to make false claims about the election, he and his team were “damaging his legacy”.
Mr Trump had shrugged off his concern, he said.
The then-Republican president, she testified, “said something like, ‘Nobody’s going to care about my legacy if I lose, so it’s not going to matter.’
“‘The only thing that matters is winning’.”
The committee also criticized the president’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, a former White House aide, for not being “close” with investigators.
Mrs. Trump and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany “displayed a complete lack of recall on certain issues, or were not as frank or direct” as other aides to Mr. Trump, according to the report.
Trump’s presidential campaign, which he launched last month, released a statement accusing the committee of holding “a show trial of Never Trump supporters who are a stain on the history of this country.”
“This kangaroo court has been nothing more than a vanity project that insults the intelligence of Americans and makes a mockery of our democracy.”
A bust of Trump that stood during the day of riots at the US Capitol
The committee also said it would refer four Republican members of Congress to the House ethics committee, including Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, for failing to comply with the committee.
“If we want to survive as a nation of laws and democracy, this can never happen again,” said committee chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi.
“If faith is broken, so is our democracy. Donald Trump broke that faith,” he added.
More than 900 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol riot.
