Committee investigating January 6 comes to an end and must ask for Trump’s indictment

After 18 months, more than a thousand witnesses heard and a million pages of documents analyzed, the committee that investigates in the US House of Representatives the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 should have its last meeting this Monday (19 ). With a final card: the request for the indictment of former President Donald Trump.

The expectation is that the group will release next Wednesday (23) the final report of the investigations into the attack on Congress, when a crowd of Trump supporters tried to forcibly prevent the confirmation of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 elections. insurrection left five dead.

The committee was constituted on July 1, 2021 with nine deputies, including two republicans, and works along the lines of a Brazilian CPI (parliamentary commission of inquiry), with a request for documents and subpoenas to provide testimony.

The group achieved important revelations, especially in testimonies from the former president’s close circle, which shook American politics, to the point that the annual retrospective of the best programs on American TV made by The New York Times includes “audiences of the committee of the 6th of January”.

“It’s not an insult to call this investigation into the attack on democracy a TV show; that was its power and its accomplishment. Utilizing deft editing, narrative structure, graphics, suspense, social media virality, and yes, a touch of charisma , the testimonials turned a public service into the show of the summer and the most important TV event of the year,” said James Poniewozik, critic for the newspaper

If there was any doubt about the extent to which Trump really believed in the allegations of fraud, the testimonies showed that his allies repeatedly warned him that the defeat at the polls had been legitimate, as testified by former US Attorney General William Barr. “If he really believes that, he has lost touch with reality,” he said.

In addition, the former president lobbied local authorities to the Department of Justice to reverse the election result, according to testimonies. His lawyer, John Eastman, would have pressured the vice, Mike Pence, not to certify Biden’s victory even though he knew that the measure was illegal and that it would be barred in the Supreme Court. Angered by the vice president’s inaction, January 6 radicals chanted “hang Mike Pence” as they stormed Congress.

There were also details that entered the folklore of Trump’s final days, such as Rudy Giuliani, a former lawyer for the republican and former mayor of New York, advising the then president to declare victory even “visibly drunk”, according to Jason Miller, former Trump adviser to the commission.

Or the account of an employee of the chief of staff of the republican, Cassidy Hutchinson, that the then president would have been so angry to hear that there was no fraud that he threw a plate of food away and smeared walls in the White House with ketchup. According to her, Trump knew that the demonstrators summoned by him on January 6 were carrying all kinds of weapons.

The commission had already called the invasion of the Capitol an attempted coup d’état and must now vote on the ex-president’s indictment. Sources close to the committee told Politico that the final report must contain at least three formal charges: insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the US government and obstruction of official procedure.

The listing, however, is almost symbolic. It is a request for the Justice Department to indict Trump for these crimes, with the evidence raised and organized by the committee, but the group itself does not have the power to conduct a lawsuit against the former president in court. Something similar to the CPI of the pandemic in the Brazilian Senate, which accused Jair Bolsonaro and his ministers of crimes against humanity, among others, without actually being prosecuted for it.

In the US, Trump is already being investigated by the Department of Justice for his role in January 6th. Even without the power to take legal action, the committee’s final report ratchets up the pressure and hands a detailed investigation to US justice authorities, in an unprecedented move by the US Congress against a former president.

In a statement through his spokesman, Trump said the committee was a “stain on the country’s history” and that it “insults the intelligence of Americans and makes a mockery of democracy.”

There were still many refusals to collaborate, the loudest being that of Steve Bannon, a former Trump strategist. He was sentenced to four years in prison for contempt for refusing to hand over documents and testify to the committee. According to investigations, Bannon spoke with Trump at least twice in the day before the attack and attended a planning meeting at a hotel in Washington. The panel even showed a video in which Bannon says, in his podcast, on January 5, 2021, that “hell will break out tomorrow”. Condemned, he appeals in freedom.

Trump himself was also subpoenaed, in the final stretch of the investigation, and should have testified to the committee in mid-November, but he refused and sued the group.

But the committee also took its toll on the Republicans involved. Liz Cheney, Trump’s most vocal opponent within the party, lost the Wyoming primary and may not even run in November. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the other Republican in the group, did not even seek re-election.

The end of the commission has a very practical reason. The Democrats lost control of the House in the legislative elections that took place in November, and from January 3, the House will be led by the Republican Party, the same as Trump. And the likely new Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, sent a letter to the committee asking for the preservation of the records of the investigations, indicating that he can embarrass and change the signal of the committee, ordering to investigate the investigators.