January sixth panel has unanimously urged criminal prosecution for Donald Trump. Let's dig into it again, joining us live as Bloomberg coggressional reporter Billy House. Thank you again, Billy. Now we know this is not legally binding to go through it for criminal prosecution, but the but the charges are severe, so let's go through them. And this is you might want to comment to a result of serious exhaustive work. Oh,
it has been. I mean we're seventeen months of investigation, uh by the committee and millions of dollars and as you know, eighteen well publicized hearings. Um. But the referrals are essentially four charges, including the assistance of an insurrection, which is very severe, could result in disqualification of a person, in this case former President Trump from running for office again. Yeah, and the referrals do go to them. I'm sorry, I
don't mean to terrupt. The referrals go to the Department of Justice, which is where King on on two separate investigations of its own. It's absolutely correct that, in fact that the Department of Justice, at this point, seventeen months after the the House Committee began its work, maybe even further along than the House Committee ended up. So we don't know where they are, but we know that they
are well into some of these issues. And so is a separate investigation out of Georgia and Fulton County, Atlanta. So the committee mentioned Donald Trump and John Eastman by name. Now, unless I missed it and I may have gone away to go to the bathroom or something, I'm watching the hearing, they mentioned them as co conspirators. Uh, they mentioned more
names to come. Do we have an inkling of who? Well, we do, I mean, but they do it in a kind of, uh, I don't want to say soft peddling way, but with they they suggest, with the number of the charges, including the obstruction and the conspiracy charges, that there are a number of individuals and they run from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, to Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark to even former mayor julianni who had played
roles in some of these activities. And therefore they suggest the committee that is that the Justice Department look into those or scrutinize their roles, and they have ethics referrals to that they're going to uh get to, including Kevin McCarthy. Does it make hard harder for McCarthy's bid to become speaker, which is challenged already. It is challenged, but ironically it's the only challenger. Is also one of the four House members with with the high geop leader UH to be
slapped with a referral to the House Ethics Committee. Andy Biggs of Arizona, who says he's running against McCarthy UH, is also being accused by the Committee of of you know, not not obliging a subpoena and therefore should face ethics charges. Yeah. Now, I heard conjecture today that McCarthy actually to get in and may have to make deals where it would take one House member to UH to challenge him and he'd be out. Is that correct? And how does that work? Well,
it's a complicated process. Here's here's the rub. The entire House, Republicans and Democrats, four thirty five members vote on January three who will be the next speaker. UH. McCarthy and Republicans hold a very slim majority, only four seats right now, UH, And if Biggs and his group of five or so decided to hold out, Arthur's gonna have a tough time getting the require two votes. The process is, until somebody can get at least plus one of the total House votes,
you don't have a speaker. You keep doing the reballoting. Now that hasn't happened for decades, but it's shaping up to be a very real possibility this January. Okay, all right, Billy, great work, and this is uh, the committee work, the body of work is just absolutely amazing. Thank you so much. That is Billy House, Congressional Bloomberg reporter,