The mystery about whether or not there will be criminal referrals coming out of the hearings or not is actually moot. In the link below is an example of how they are already making such referrals in the televised hearings themselves.
Hate seems to think that everything is riding on them presenting blatant evidence that Trump directly and personally ordered or organized the planned out attack on the Capitol. As if "Personally organizing and ordering an attack on the Capitol" is the only crime that they are looking at or that Trump might ever be held accountable for with prison hanging over his head.
Au contraire, mon frere.
At the link, Hate can watch a nine minute video to make up for his pathetic failure to reciprocate in fairness to my having done what he asked. She said, in a sentence of the most purist hopeless optimism.
There's a clip of Liz citing just two specific crimes that the evidence shows were committed directly by Trump himself. And the specific statutes are also shown in the clip in all their glorious legalese.
Now I know that Hate is just gonna blow off anything presented in these hearings as being inconsequential and petty, like he blew off all of the crimes Trump committed that got him impeached. Twice. But interfering with the counting of a fully certified election is a criminal offense. It is by no means a petty thing.
And they've barely begun to start listing crime after crime, statute after statute that he violated and have been documented. State crimes. Federal crimes. A cornucopia of willful, criminal enterprises and projects that he himself undertook personally, all for the specific purpose of overturning a certified election just so that he could stay in power.
So it's not like tons of legal forms need to be written up and notarized and presented in triplicate to government offices by certified post in order to be an official "Criminal Referral". Everything they are presenting in these hearings is essentially a criminal referral to the Justice Department.
And the Justice Department has said it is watching the hearings closely...