Remember the Name: Trump referred for prosecution in room honoring Pelosi

The nine-member committee made Monday's announcement in the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Caucus Room, which up until last week was known as the Cannon Caucus Room.

Its new name was officially renamed five days before Monday's hearing, when Pelosi's portrait was unveiled at the U.S. Capitol. That portrait hangs in the Speaker's Lobby, where rioter Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed on Jan. 6, 2021 as more than 2,000 people stormed the building in an effort to halt the certification of President Joe Biden's electoral college victory. 

The committee on Monday referred Trump for prosecution over his alleged role in the violence, accusing him of inciting insurrection, obstruction of an act of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and conspiracy to make a false statement to the government. 

Trump already faces a Department of Justice investigation, and the department does not have to act upon the referrals. A Washington Post analysis found that recent Congressional referrals of elected officials didn't lead to criminal charges. 

In a statement on Monday, Pelosi said the committee's executive summary of its findings "documents the sinister plot to subvert the Congress, shred the Constitution and halt the peaceful transfer of power" in "painstaking detail." 

"The Committee has reached important conclusions about the evidence it has developed, and I respect those findings," Pelosi said. "Our Founders made clear that, in the United States of America, no one is above the law. This bedrock principle remains unequivocally true, and justice must be done."

Pelosi sheltered in a secure location on Capitol Hill as the Jan. 6 attack unfolded, when some rioters stormed her office and others could be heard asking, "Where's Nancy?" David DePape, the man accused of breaking into Pelosi's San Francisco home and attacking her husband earlier his year, allegedly asked the same question. 

Long a focal point of the ire of Trump and his allies, Pelosi created the select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection last year, about a month after Senate Republicans blocked a vote on creating an independent commission to probe the attack.

After the panel unanimously voted to subpoena Trump in October, he blasted the committee's work as a "witch hunt." He applied the same label to the House's impeachment inquiries into him — one centered on his alleged holding up of security aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into Biden, the other following the Jan. 6 insurrection — that ended with acquittals. 

In both instances, the Senate acquitted Trump after failing to reach a two-thirds majority. 

Trump is running for president again in 2024, and legal experts have said that a federal conviction — let alone a prosecution — wouldn't legally keep him off the ballot were he to secure the Republican nomination.