Members of the House January 6th Select Committee are split on whether a criminal referral to the Justice Department for the Orange Warlord for inciting the insurrection will be necessary despite concluding they have more than enough evidence to do so, the New York Times reports.

There are a number of reasons why holding off is probably the correct move. First off, only contempt referrals carry the actual requirement that they be considered by the DC US Attorney’s office – any other type of referral has the same formal weight as submitting a crime report on the FBI’s website. Second, a referral would possibly add unnecessary political pressure to the already ongoing investigation inside the Justice Department. Lastly, a potentially far weightier criminal referral basically already happened last month when California federal Judge David O Carter ruled that it was “more likely than not” that Trump committed a crime in trying to overturn the election.

Had Carter not ruled as such when tossing John Eastman’s lawsuit against the committee claiming a nonexistent privileged attorney-client relationship between himself and Trump to hide his email from them, we would be amping to have them go ahead and do it, come hell or high water. But the fact is that the work has already been done for them. It’d be like firing a pistol when the judge already launched a switchblade drone. The committee can and should go ahead and spell out that Trump committed a crime when their final report is released, but leave out the “formal” referral which wouldn’t really be all that formal and stir up a pointless shitstorm.