WASHINGTON – The House Jan. The Sixth Committee released its official report on Thursday, the culmination of a historic 18-month investigation into the deadly attack on the Capitol and former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
“[A]After nearly a year and a half of investigating, I am horrified by the dangers to our democracy. Specifically, I thought about what that mob was doing out there: preventing the peaceful transfer of power from one President to another based on lies that the election was rigged and tainted by widespread fraud,” said Jan. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., wrote in the report’s foreword.
“The rioters were in the halls of Congress because the head of the executive branch of our government, the president of the United States at the time, told them to attack,” Thompson continued. “Donald Trump called that mob into Washington, DC. Afterwards, he sent them to the Capitol to try to stop me and my colleagues from fulfilling our constitutional duty to justify the election.”
“They put our democracy to the test,” he added.
The committee released its 845-page report Days after the last committee meeting, the committee’s nine members — seven Democrats and two Republicans — voted to recommend that the Justice Department bring charges against Trump if he ran for the White House again in 2024. criminal proceedings.
It was the first time in history that a congressional committee referred a criminal case to the president of the United States. January. Panel 6, led by Thompson and Wyoming Republican Vice Chairman Liz Cheney, found the Justice Department had enough evidence to indict Trump on four specific charges, including obstruction of official process — Congress’ certification of electoral votes — and inciting or assisting others in rebellion.
Among the committee’s nearly ten recommendations listed at the end of the report: Urging Congress to develop a method to assess whether Trump and others involved in the 2020 election conspiracy should be barred from future public office.
Consistent with the committee’s series of summer hearings and their executive summaries, the full eight-chapter report largely places the blame on January. 6 Attack at the feet of the 45th president downplays security and intelligence lapses.
Chapter 1 is titled “Big Lies,” a nod to Trump’s extensive efforts to delegitimize the 2020 election and falsely claim it was stolen, while Chapter 2 is titled “I Just Want to Find 11,780 votes,” focusing on Trump’s attempts to pressure state and election officials in Georgia and elsewhere to overturn the election results.
Witnesses, nearly all Republicans, testified that Trump and his inner circle were frantically sowing doubts about Joe Biden’s legitimate electoral victory; and then-Vice President Mike Pence to help overturn the election; directing thousands of his supporters to march on the Capitol to disrupt lawmakers’ counting of the electoral votes that would certify the election’s outcome; and refusing to call out his supporters, Because they brutally attacked the police and stormed the Capitol.
“The most disgraceful of the committee’s findings is that President Trump was sitting in the dining room outside the Oval Office watching the violent riots in the Capitol on television. … No one would have done that at the time, Cheney Speaking at Monday’s meeting, she repeated the line in her foreword: “He is unfit for any position. “
Trump unleashed a series of inflammatory posts overnight on his Truth Social network, repeating numerous false claims about the election being stolen and attacking the committee, the FBI and others.
“There is nothing worse than the US government changing our election results,” he wrote Friday, falsely claiming he was the true winner of the 2020 election. “Look at the damage done to our country and the world over the past two years – it’s immeasurable. Trump won!!!”
The committee’s report said Trump and his inner circle conducted at least 200 public or private acts of “outreach, pressure, or condemnation” against state and local election officials and state lawmakers in an effort to unseat Trump’s November elections. Election results between the 2018 general elections. January 6.
There were 68 meetings, phone calls or text messages directed at state or local officials; 18 public statements directed at them; and 125 social media posts, the commission said.
The report also revealed more details about the sham electoral scheme, the committee said, when state officials in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and other key battlegrounds made it clear they would not overturn their state’s election results and replace them with Trump electors. Trump embraced the plan while Biden was electorate.
On Monday, the committee handed over conservative attorney John Eastman to the Justice Department for his role in a plan to pressure Pence to reject state electoral votes on Jan. 1. On June 6, the report identified Trump-aligned attorney Kenneth Chesebro as central to the conceptualized plot.
Some of the committee’s conclusions appear in an appendix to the report. For example, previous reports and Jan. 6 hearings showed Pentagon bureaucrats, including the Lt. Gen. General Walter Piatt and General. Charles Flynn delayed sending in the National Guard because police were overwhelmed by mobs.
But the committee found no deliberate delay of troops: “While the delay appears unnecessary and unacceptable, it was a byproduct of military procedure, agency caution, and the revised deployment approval process,” the committee wrote in Appendix 2.
“We have no evidence that the delay was intentional.”
As part of its mandate, the committee also makes recommendations to Congress and federal agencies. The panel urged a congressional committee to consider establishing a “formal mechanism” to determine whether to bar Trump and others named in the report from holding future federal or state office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which targets those “Participating in or rebelling against an insurrection, or rendering aid or comfort to its enemies.”
January. 6 The committee also called for a reform of the 1887 electoral counting law to make it clear that the vice president does not have the power to unilaterally reject electoral votes, an update that is already underway. Congress will pass such a proposal this week as part of its comprehensive spending plan.
Also, Jan. 6 The committee recommends that federal agencies adopt a “whole-of-government strategy” to root out and counter violent extremism, including white nationalists. It also urged law enforcement to designate future presidential election certifications as “exceptional national security incidents.” This will require increased planning, coordination and security for the future January 1st. 6 accreditation events at the Capitol.
“Motivated by our findings, these recommendations will help strengthen the guardrails of our democracy,” Thompson wrote.
The report marks the culmination of a sweeping congressional investigation that included 11 public hearings, more than 100 subpoenas, more than 1,200 witness interviews and the collection of hundreds of thousands of text messages, emails and other documents.
The committee has begun releasing transcripts of dozens of witnesses who invoked their Fifth Amendment rights, including Trump aides Eastman, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and Jeffrey Clark.
Thursday, January. 6 The panel released transcripts of the testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified that Trump knew the mob was armed when he sent it to the Capitol and that he tried to get there Join his supporters.
In the coming days, the committee also plans to release transcripts of other interviews and testimony, as well as videos and other documents and records.
The panel expires at the end of the year because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California created it as a “special” committee. Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives in January, have no plans to stay in office.
In her final news conference as speaker on Thursday, Pelosi praised Thompson, Cheney and others. “Unrelenting patriotic leadership” of 6 members.
“The 117th Congress began with a violent attack on our democracy, and now we have heard its conclusion,” she said. “We have an important roadmap to make sure that justice is done…things like this don’t happen again.”