Declaring that the root cause of the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 was “one man”, the House of Representatives committee investigating the attack delivered its final report on Thursday (22), describing in detail how former President Donald Trump carried out what he called “a multi-part plan to cancel the 2020 presidential election” and recommending measures to ensure that nothing like this can happen again.
The report revealed new evidence about Trump’s conduct and recommended that Congress consider whether to bar the former president and his allies from future office holding under the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurgents.
“The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed,” the report said. “None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”
The release of the full report was the culmination of the committee’s 18-month investigation and came three days after the committee approved formal charges against Trump for inciting insurrection, conspiring to defraud the United States, obstructing an act of Congress, and yet another crime. federal government in forwarding it to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution. Although the referrals do not oblige the Federal Public Ministry to take any action, they send a strong signal that the congressional select committee believes that the former president committed crimes.
“Our institutions are only strong when those who hold office are faithful to our Constitution,” wrote Republican Representative Liz Cheney, the commission’s vice chair, in the report, adding: “Part of the tragedy of January 6 is the conduct of those who knew that what happened was deeply wrong, yet they tried to downplay its significance or defend those responsible.”
The report contains the commission’s legislative recommendations, which are intended to prevent future presidents from attempting a similar conspiracy. The panel has already endorsed the revision of the Election Count Act, which Trump and his allies sought to exploit on Jan. 6 in an attempt to stay in power. The House is scheduled to give final approval to this revision on Friday (23).
Among the commission’s recommendations is a possible revision of the Insurrection Act and strengthening enforcement of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits insurgents from holding public office.
The panel also said Congress should consider legislation to strengthen its subpoena powers and increase penalties against those who threaten election officials. And he said bar associations should consider whether any of the lawyers who helped Trump in attempts to overturn the election should be punished.
In addition to focusing on Trump’s actions, the report went into great detail about a range of aides who trained him. Mark Meadows, his last chief of staff, and attorneys John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro have been named as potential “co-conspirators” in Trump’s various attempts to stay in power.
Trump criticized the report on his social networking site, Truth Social, calling it “highly partisan”.
In a statement, Clark dismissed the committee’s report as a “last gasp” from a committee that is expected to dissolve when Republicans take control of the House in January.
“This commission is now all but dead and will be all dead on January 2, 2023,” said Clark, whose phone was seized as part of a Justice Department criminal investigation into his ancillary role in Trump’s efforts.
The commission had already released the report’s executive summary, a 154-page legal description of Trump’s tireless effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 election by 7 million votes.
The report accompanying the summary was largely an expanded version of the committee’s widely attended set of hearings this summer — which frequently attracted more than 10 million viewers — with the topics of its chapters reflecting the themes of the sessions.
They included Trump’s dissemination of lies about the election, the creation of false pro-Trump voter lists in states won by President Joe Biden, and the former president’s pressure campaign against state officials, the Department of Justice, and the former president. Vice President Mike Pence. The commission’s report documents how Trump summoned a crowd of his supporters to Washington and did nothing to stop them as they stormed the Capitol for more than three hours.
The document is the result of an investigation that included more than 1,000 witness interviews and an analysis of more than 1 million pages of documents, obtained after the committee issued more than 100 subpoenas.
The commission also on Wednesday and Thursday released more than 40 transcripts of witness statements, some of which provided new details about the investigation, while others showed nearly three dozen witnesses invoking their Fifth Amendment right not to produce evidence. against themselves. Other documents will be released by the end of the year.
The nine-member committee consisted of seven Democrats and two Republicans, all of whom rose to prominence with the highly scripted and produced televised hearings that redefined the way Congressional investigations can be presented to the public.
“Our country has come too far to allow a defeated president to become a victorious tyrant, tearing down our democratic institutions, fomenting violence and, in my view, opening the door to those […] whose hatred and bigotry threaten equality and justice for all Americans,” wrote Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee, in the report’s foreword.
Among those who received significant criticism in the report was Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, who he tasked with finding ways to prevent Biden from taking power and Trump from losing it.
In one of the most glaring examples of pressure from Giuliani, the report cites a call he made to an official in Maricopa County, Arizona, asking for a callback. “Maybe we can fix this,” he said in his message. “You know, I really think it’s a shame that Republicans are in this situation. And I think there might be a good way to solve this for everyone.”
The commission also registered state officials willing to be particularly helpful to Trump’s cause, such as Doug Mastriano, the Pennsylvania state senator who later became the Republican nominee for governor. Mastriano’s emails suggest he spoke with Trump within three days in late December and that Trump’s aide told the White House director of legislative affairs that Trump wanted letters from state senators asking Republican congressional leaders to reject the Pennsylvania electoral votes.
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