Top Republicans refusing to come to Trump's defense after criminal referrals

Ryan King

December 20, 07:56 AM December 20, 08:24 AM

A number of top Senate Republicans are refusing to come to former President Donald Trump's defense in the wake of the Jan. 6 committee making a number of criminal referrals to the Justice Department.

After the referrals were made Monday, top party officials refused to defend Trump, sidestepped questions about the former president's woes, and called for the DOJ to have the final say on what happens next.

“The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day. Beyond that, I don’t have any immediate observations," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) declared in response to questions about the referrals.

'THESE FOLKS DON'T GET IT': TRUMP DISMISSES JAN. 6 CRIMINAL REFERRALS, SAYS IT ONLY MAKES HIM STRONGER

On Monday, the Jan. 6 committee unveiled criminal referrals for Trump to the Department of Justice on four categories of criminal conduct: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, and inciting an insurrection.

Trump unsuccessfully prodded Senate Republicans to oust McConnell, but the Kentucky sage managed to overcome an effort to usurp his seat from Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) earlier this year. Some Republicans aligned with him echoed similar sentiments.

“It’s up to Justice now,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD) said, per the Hill. “[The panel] interviewed some credible witnesses.”

“I think the referrals are not as important as the report. The report’s important, even though it came out of a partisan process,” Sen Rob Portman (R-OH) told the outlet. "The testimony is the testimony, and they were able to get the testimony from most of the people they wanted — not everybody but most — and I think most of the significant figures.”

Back in early 2021, seven Republican senators voted to convict Trump and remove him from office during the second impeachment for his actions surrounding the Capitol riot — a higher rate of party defections than in the House. Unsurprisingly, many of those senators appeared open-minded to the referral.

“I am not a lawyer and certainly not a prosecutor,” outgoing Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who voted to convict, said, the Hill reported. “I don’t know the legal basis of it, but you know what I think of what the president did that day."

“Obviously they spent considerable time and [went into] great detail over many months they have investigated this,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) contended, according to the Hill. “I think it’s going to be important for us to read this report that will be coming out Wednesday."

Trump himself shrugged off the referrals, proclaiming "what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger," and chalked up the development as "a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party." Criminal referrals are ultimately nonbinding. It will be up to the DOJ to decide whether or not to bring forward charges.

Special counsel Jack Smith has been appointed to oversee the DOJ's sprawling investigation of the Jan. 6 riot and coinciding efforts to overturn the 2020 election — an inquiry done in tandem with the Jan. 6 committee's review. He is expected to weigh criminal charges against Trump in that matter, as well as the other investigation he is overseeing pertaining to the Mar-a-Lago document saga.

The Jan. 6 committee is expected to release the final report of its findings on Wednesday.