Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said the panel recently received a trove of documents from the Secret Service in response to a subpoena it issued after the news that agents’ text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, had been lost.
A spokesman for the agency said the Secret Service provided a “significant level of detail from emails, radio transmissions, Microsoft Teams chat messages and exhibits that address aspects of planning, operations and communications surrounding January 6th.” But the spokesman said the documents did not include any additional text messages, such as those sought by the committee that were erased during an upgrade of phones.
Members of the committee had originally seen their investigation, and the possibility of a criminal referral, as a way of putting pressure on the Justice Department to pursue a criminal case. But with federal prosecutors now investigating elements of Mr. Trump’s efforts to retain power despite losing at the ballot box, the House committee is considering a new suggestion for the information it uncovered about Mr. Trump and his allies raising money by promoting baseless assertions about election fraud: making a referral to the Federal Election Commission, a largely toothless body that can weigh abuses of campaign finance laws.
“F.E.C. would be a good possibility,” Mr. Thompson said. “Obviously we looked seriously at some of the fund-raising that went on around Jan. 6.”
Members have also been discussing what legislative recommendations they should make. Last week, to close off the possibility of another president trying to have a vice president block the certification by Congress of the Electoral College results, Ms. Cheney and Ms. Lofgren introduced an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act, which quickly passed the House. (Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, on Tuesday endorsed a somewhat different version awaiting action in the Senate, bolstering its prospects of enactment.)
Members are also discussing reforms to the Insurrection Act, legislation related to the 14th and 25th amendments and regulation of militia groups. They also are likely to recommend improvements to Capitol security.
Not all the panel’s recommendations have found agreement. Mr. Raskin, for instance, has pushed for recommending that the Electoral College be eliminated, but that idea has been met with resistance from Ms. Cheney and others and is unlikely to be included in the final recommendations.
Maggie Haberman, Alan Feuer and Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.
