The January 6 House Committee on Thursday released its final report on the 2021 “unimaginable” attack on the US Capitol, a mass assault by supporters of ousted President Donald Trump, that rocked the nation and exposed the fragility of American democracy.
The 814-page account provides a compelling account of Trump’s months-long effort to void the 2020 presidential election and lays out 11 recommendations for Congress and others to heed to strengthen the nation’s institutions against any future attempts to incite presidential elections. insurrection.
The jury decided to compile a story dossier. Along with the report, it’s releasing dozens of witness transcripts from its more than 1,000 interviews with startling new details.
Witnesses — ranging from many of Trump’s closest law enforcement aides to some of the rioters themselves — detailed Trump’s “premeditated” actions in the weeks leading up to the attack and how his wide-ranging efforts to overturn the His defeat directly affected those who brutally pushed past police and smashed the windows and doors of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The central cause was “one man,” the report said: Trump. This week he made an unprecedented criminal firing of a former US president for prosecution.
President Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in the foreword that the “what if” questions remain.
“The US president inciting a crowd to march on Capitol Hill and obstruct the work of Congress is not a scenario our intelligence and law enforcement communities have envisioned for this country,” he said. “Before January 6, it was unimaginable.”
TRUMP’S “MULTI-PARTY” CONSPIRACY TO CANCEL THE ELECTION IN EIGHT CHAPTERS
From the “big lie” of Trump’s claims on Election Night in November 2020 about a stolen election to the bloody siege on January 6, 2021, the report describes the beginning and end of the mob attack that unfolded so that the whole world can see it.
It details how Trump and his allies engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election – first through legal appeals, then, when they failed, by compiling electoral rolls to contest Joe Biden’s victory .
Zoe Lefgren, D-California, presented an email sent by Tom Fitton before the election showing Donald Trump’s plans to deny losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. A recording of Steve Bannon telling his associates that Trump would declare victory even though he “isn’t a winner” was also played.
As Congress prepared to meet on Jan. 6 to certify the election, Trump called a crowd in Washington for his “Stop the Steal” rally at the White House.
“When Donald Trump directed them to the Capitol and told them to ‘fight like hell,’ that’s exactly what they did,” Thompson wrote. “Donald Trump started this fire. But in the weeks leading up to it, the fire he finally lit was piled up for all to see.
NEW DETAILS ABOUT REPLACING WITNESSES
Following successful public hearings, the report and accompanying documents provide more detailed accounts of key aspects of Team Trump’s plan to void the election, join the mob on Capitol Hill and, once the committee begins to investigate, lobby about those who would testify against him. .
Among the dozens of new witness transcripts was Thursday’s release of an unedited account by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson detailing a surprising campaign by Trump’s allies urging him to remain “loyal” as he testified before to the jury.
Hutchinson told the House committee that her first attorney, a former Trump White House ethics adviser, advised her she could tell she did not recall the incidents even though she remembered some details but not others.
“The committee doesn’t know what you can and can’t remember, so we want to be able to use it as much as possible unless you really remember something very clearly,” he told attorney Stefan Passantino. of him.
Hutchinson, who worked for former chief of staff Mark Meadows, later switched lawyers. She said her breaking point came after Passantino told her he thought the best decision for her was to stop cooperating with the January 6 committee. She told her there was only a remote risk that she would be charged with contempt of Congress, she said.
Hutchinson also said Passantino approached her to offer to be her attorney for free, but she didn’t say who was funding her legal services.
“And he said, ‘If you want to know eventually, we’ll let you know, but we’re not telling people where the funding is coming from right now. Don’t worry, we’re taking care of you. For example, you’ll never get a bill if that’s what worries you.
He said he later discovered the money came from Trump’s camp.
House Select Committee Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, revealed Tuesday that committee members will decide how to move forward after reports of Trump allies trying to influence testimony about the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. United States.
On Monday, one of the committee members, Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, said the committee had learned that the money Trump raised “under false claims” after the 2020 election was then used to hire lawyers for the witnesses called. to testify. and offer financial incentives to witnesses.
The report said the committee estimates that in the two months between the November election and the Jan. 6 attack, “Trump or those around him engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public education, lobbying, or condemnation. or private, targeting both state legislators or state or local election administrators, to void state election results.
WHAT TRUMP DID (AND DID NOT) DURING THE RIOT
The report also details Trump’s inaction as his loyalists violently stormed the building.
A Secret Service employee told the committee that Trump’s determination to go to the Capitol had alerted officials.
“(We) all knew…he would go through with it if he physically went to the Capitol,” an unidentified employee said. “I don’t know if you want to use the word ‘insurrection’, ‘coup’, whatever. We all knew it was going to go from a regular democratic public event to something else.
From inaction to adding “fuel to the fire,” the House Select Committee exposed former President Donald Trump’s moves during the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.
After returning to the White House after delivering a speech to his supporters, the president asked an employee if he had seen his remarks on television.
“Sir, they cut it because they’re rioting on Capitol Hill,” the staffer said, according to the report.
Trump asked what that meant and got the same answer. “Oh really?” Trump then asked. “Okay, let’s see.”
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE SAFEGUARD OF DEMOCRACY
The report makes 11 recommendations to Congress and others to safeguard American democracy and its tradition of peacefully transferring presidential power from one leader to another.
The first, an overhaul of the voter counting law, is on track to become law in the year-end spending bill slated for final approval this week in Congress.
The committee also made recommendations to the Justice Department to prosecute Trump and others on conspiracy to defraud the public and other potential charges. He also referred the former president to impeachment for “aiding, aiding and consoling an insurrection.”
Criminal referrals now go to the Justice Department for review.
Other changes may be within reach or prove more elusive. Among them, the report recommends tightening security around key congressional events, reviewing Capitol police oversight, and increasing federal penalties for certain types of threats against poll workers.
One recommendation is that Congress create a formal mechanism to consider excluding individuals from public office if they engage in insurrection or rebellion under the Fourteenth Amendment. He argues that those sworn to uphold the Constitution can be disqualified from holding future federal or state office if they support an insurrection.
RECORDS FOR HISTORY
The January 6 committee was created after Congress chastised the attempt to form a 9/11-style independent commission to investigate the attack on the Capitol. Republicans blocked the idea.
Instead, Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the House in forming the committee. In your foreword to the report, you said this “must be a clear call to all Americans: vigilantly protect our democracy.”
Led by Thompson and Vice President Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the panel’s work is intended to be a historical record of what happened in the most serious attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812.
Five people have died in the riot and its aftermath, including Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter killed by police, and Brian Sicknick, a police officer who died the day after fighting off a mob.
“Prosecutors are evaluating the implications of the conduct we describe in our report,” said Representative Liz Cheney, R-WY. “Faith in our elections and the rule of law are fundamental to our republic.”
Cheney noted that the committee decided that most of its witnesses should be Republicans, the president’s team and allies. In the report’s foreword, she wrote that history will be remembered for the “courage of a handful of Americans” and those who resisted Trump’s “corrupt pressure.”
For everyone, the commission and the report had a personal weight.
Thompson, a black leader in Congress, noted that the iconic United States Capitol, built with minimal labor, “is itself an inescapable part of our country’s history, both good and bad…a symbol of our journey towards a more perfect union”.
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Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri, Mary Clare Jalonick, Eric Tucker and Nomaan Merchant contributed to this report.
