NYT:

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Wednesday that there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies might have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the result.

In a court filing in a civil case in California, the committee’s lawyers for the first time laid out their theory of a potential criminal case against the former president. They said they had accumulated evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump, the conservative lawyer John Eastman and other allies could potentially be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people.

The filing also said there was evidence that Mr. Trump’s repeated lies that the election had been stolen amounted to common law fraud.

The filing disclosed only limited new evidence, and the committee asked the judge in the civil case to review the relevant material behind closed doors. In asserting the potential for criminality, the committee largely relied on the extensive and detailed accounts already made public of the actions Mr. Trump and his allies took to keep him in office after his defeat.

The committee added information from its more than 550 interviews with state officials, Justice Department officials and top aides to Mr. Trump, among others.

It said, for example, that Jason Miller, Mr. Trump’s senior campaign adviser, had told the committee in a deposition that Mr. Trump had been told soon after Election Day by a campaign data expert “in pretty blunt terms” that he was going to lose, suggesting that Mr. Trump was well aware that his months of assertions about a stolen election were false. (Mr. Trump subsequently said he disagreed with the data expert’s analysis, Mr. Miller said, because he thought he could win in court.)

The evidence gathered by the committee “provides, at minimum, a good-faith basis for concluding that President Trump has violated” the obstruction count, the filing, written by Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, said, adding: “The select committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

The filing said that a “review of the materials may reveal that the president and members of his campaign engaged in common law fraud in connection with their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.”…

The panel, which is controlled by Democrats, is a legislative committee and has no authority to charge the former president — or anyone else — with a crime.

But the filing contains the clearest indication yet about the committee’s direction as it weighs making a criminal referral to the Justice Department against Mr. Trump and his allies, a step that could put pressure on Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to take up the case. The Justice Department has said little of substance about whether it might ultimately pursue a case.

The filing laid out a sweeping if by now well-established account of the plot to overturn the election, which included false claims of election fraud, plans to put forward pro-Trump “alternate” electors, pressure various federal agencies to find irregularities and ultimately push Vice President Mike Pence and Congress to exploit the Electoral Count Act to keep a losing president in power.

“As the president and his associates propagated dangerous misinformation to the public,” the filing said, Mr. Eastman “was a leader in a related effort to persuade state officials to alter their election results based on these same fraudulent claims.”

Politico:

The committee suggests Trump and some of his allies may have committed three distinct crimes: Obstruction of an official proceeding — in this case, Congress’ Jan 6 session to count electoral votes — defrauding the United States by interfering in the election certification and spreading false information about the results, and a violation of the District of Columbia’s common fraud law….

To prove Trump committed felony obstruction, investigators would have to show he “corruptly” intended to impede an official proceeding — and the committee says his work with Eastman to pressure Pence to take illegal acts could satisfy this requirement, particularly as Trump continued to spread claims of fraud that his own allies said were unfounded.

Determining whether Trump violated criminal law on Jan. 6 is a complex undertaking, though the panel’s findings may drive up pressure on the Justice Department to reveal its own thinking on the matter. Prosecutors have charged hundreds of Trump supporters who breached the Capitol with seeking to obstruct Congress’ effort to count electoral votes, but applying that law to the former president presents a trickier calculus.

Steve Vladeck: