Welcome to the beat. I'm Ari Melbert tracking this breaking news. Congress has referred former president Donald Trump for criminal prosecution today.

The high stakes action came in this final meeting of the January 6th Select Committee.

Marks a momentous close to an investigation now considered one of the most significant in a generation.

Indeed, you can see the first draft history in this New York Times headline here.

Accusing Trump of insurrection, the committee refers him to the Justice Department for prosecution.

The Times reports this is tonight the first time in American history that Congress has referred

to former president for criminal prosecution.

So by any standard, by any metric, we are living through a major piece of history here.

Here's exactly what this means.

Those Trump fans and convicted felons who were summoned by Trump

to Washington, who committed sedition and attacked police and sought to assassinate Mike Pence and

Nancy Pelosi and achieve their goal of obstructing and delaying the vote counting, their leader

is now the first former president ever referred to prosecution for that attack that I just

briefly summarized. And Congress is providing the evidence that he led it and aided it as a legal

matter. Now for history, this is, of course, one more and a string of indignities for a twice

impeached loser of the 2020 election who responded to his loss

with this crime spree. I say crime spree because many of these felonies have been convicted. Many

people are already serving hard time for them. The question tonight is whether he ever will.

So you have these open criminal probes that Trump already faces. And they're bearing down on the same set of plots that the

committee has exposed and that Jack Smith, the special counsel, has to investigate and make decisions on

that Merrick Garland ultimately has the final say on. What does this mean? I'll tell you what it means.

Today adds evidence and pressure to that process.

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