Law professors Jonathan Turley and Alan Dershowitz said the Select Committee on Jan. 6 brought its highly scripted, one-sided account of President Donald Trump's alleged role in the events of Jan. 6 to the panel's logical conclusion on Monday by referring four criminal charges on Trump to the Department of Justice.
The charges, highly publicized by corporate media, are not likely to hold up, Turley and Dershowitz said.
"The Committee’s splashy finale lacked any substantial new evidence to make a compelling criminal case against former President Donald Trump," Turley wrote. "The Committee repackaged largely the same evidence that it has previously put forward over the past year. That is not enough."
The J6 panel's hearing on Monday, its final hearing, "was billed as presenting the case for criminal charges. It missed that mark by a considerable measure," Turley wrote.
"In my view, it's clearly unconstitutional," Dershowitz said of the J6 panel's criminal referrals on Monday's edition of the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "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 14th Amendment provides one specific time when Congress may in fact, act against an individual," Dershowitz continued. "That is if the person was engaged in an insurrection or rebellion, like in the Civil War, and they didn't act under that provision."
Dershowitz said that he believes that the DOJ will accept the committee's referrals and will most likely ignore them.
Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told NBC's "Meet the Press" earlier this month that a criminal referral is “largely symbolic” and “doesn’t do anything” for the DOJ.
MSNBC columnist Jordan Rubin noted that the criminal referrals are "just that — referrals. If you’re expecting them to automatically lead to charges against former President Donald Trump, you should temper your expectations."
The panel has referred to the Jan. 6 protests as "the first attempted coup in America’s 246-year-history."
Describing the sum of the allegations against Trump sketched out in the committee’s findings as a “crime against democracy” and referring to the hundreds of Trump followers already charged and convicted, Maryland Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin said the U.S. isn’t a country where “foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass.”
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