January 6 Committee Calls for Trump Indictment for U.S. Capitol Attack

The US House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6, 2021 invasion of Congress called on Monday (19) the indictment of former President Donald Trump on four counts related to his refusal to accept the result of the 2020 presidential election: obstruction of official procedure; conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to make a false statement; and inciting, assisting, or aiding insurrection.

It was the last meeting of the committee, in a session with strong emotional appeal broadcast by the main channels of open American TV, which ended with strong accusations against former President Donald Trump.

The summary came in the words of committee chair Bennie Thompson: “[Trump] lost the 2020 election and knew it, but chose to try to stay in office through a complex scheme to annul the results and block the transfer of power”, he said, at the opening of the session.

The listing of alleged crimes committed 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 has no power to conduct a lawsuit against the former president in court.

The commission organized the results of 18 months of verification into five topics. First, Trump’s belief in the so-called “Big Lie”, the big lie that the 2020 elections, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, were rigged. Then, pressure on state election officials to change the result in states he lost.

In the aftermath, there was pressure against Justice Department officials to reverse the defeat. In addition, Trump pressured the vice president, Mike Pence, president of the Senate, not to accept the result. And finally, when none of that worked, the then president called on the crowd to rebel against Congress, according to the committee.

Each of these topics was presented with witness statements that corroborated the committee’s arguments. In reporting the pressure on election officials, the committee played video of a Georgia pollster, Ruby Freeman, 63, who recounted how she is afraid to say her name in public to this day after the dozens of death threats she has received. In another testimony, former Attorney General William Barr appeared on video saying he warned Trump that there was no evidence of fraud. Former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks also appeared saying how she called on Trump to speak out against the violence in that day’s protests but was ignored.

The committee’s testimonies and conclusions were already known, but they were organized and presented to the public in the session broadcast by some of the largest American open TV channels —NBC, CBS and ABC. The New York Times even included the audiences in its annual retrospective of the best shows on TV.

“January 6, 2021 was the first time an American president has refused his constitutional duty to peacefully transfer power to the next,” said Representative Liz Cheney, one of two Republican lawmakers on the committee. “Among this committee’s most shameful findings is the fact that President Trump sat in the Oval Office dining room and watched the violent attack on the Capitol on television for hours,” she said. “No man who behaves in that way, at that time, can ever occupy any position of authority in our nation.”

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. During this period, more than a thousand witnesses were heard and a million pages of documents were analyzed.

Trump is already being investigated by the Justice Department for his role in January 6. 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.