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An 800-page report to be released by House investigators as soon as Wednesday will conclude that then-President Donald Trump criminally plotted to overturn his 2020 election defeat and “incited his supporters to violence” in Capitol with false claims of widespread voter fraud.
The resulting Jan. 6, 2021, insurgency by Trump followers threatened democracy with “horrific” brutality toward law enforcement and “put the lives of American lawmakers at risk,” according to the report’s summary.
“The central cause of Jan. 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump, with many others following,” the House committee’s Jan. 6 report said. “None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.”
The commission’s eight chapters of findings will largely reflect nine hearings this year that presented evidence from more than 1,000 private interviews and millions of pages of documents. They tell the story of Trump’s unprecedented campaign to overturn his defeat and his campaign to pressure government officials, the Justice Department, members of Congress and his own vice president to reverse the vote.
A 154-page summary of the report released Monday detailed how Trump, a Republican, expanded the false claims on social media and in public appearances, encouraging supporters to travel to Washington and protest Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory. And how he told them to “fight like hell” at a huge rally outside the White House that morning and then did nothing to stop the violence as they beat the police, stormed the Capitol and sent lawmakers running for their lives.
It was a “multi-part conspiracy,” the commission concluded.
The sweeping, damning report is the culmination of four years of a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, which has spent much of its time and energy investigating Trump and is ceding power to Republicans after two weeks.
Democrats have impeached Trump twice — both times he was acquitted by the Senate — and have investigated his finances, his businesses, his foreign ties and his family. But the 18-month investigation on Jan. 6 was the most personal for lawmakers, most of whom were at the Capitol when Trump supporters stormed the building, disrupted the certification of Biden’s victory and tried to prosecute them.
While the lasting impact of the investigations remains to be seen — most Republicans remained loyal to the former president — the committee’s hearings were watched by tens of millions of people over the summer. And 44 percent of voters in November’s midterm elections said the future of democracy was their top consideration at the polls, according to AP VoteCast, a large-scale national survey of the electorate.
- Read more: Republicans have been slow to defend Donald Trump since the January 6th impeachment
“This commission is nearing the end of its work, but as a country we remain in strange and uncharted waters,” said the commission’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Benny Thompson of Mississippi, at a meeting Monday to adopt the report and recommend criminal charges against Trump. “We have never had a president of the United States make a violent attempt to block a transfer of power. I believe that almost two years later this is still a time for reflection and stocktaking.”
The “reckoning” committee members are hoping for are criminal charges against Trump and key allies. But only the Justice Department has the power to prosecute, so the panel sent formal referrals recommending the department investigate the former president on four crimes, including aiding insurrection.
While the main points are familiar, the January 6 report will provide new details from the hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents collected by the commission. The transcripts and some videos are expected to be released in the next two weeks before Democrats relinquish control of the House. Republicans take over the House of Representatives on Jan. 3, when the panel will be dissolved.
“I guarantee there will be a lot of interesting new information in the report and even more in the transcripts,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told CBS’ “CBS Mornings” on Wednesday.
The report’s summary describes how Trump refused to accept the legal result of the 2020 election and conspired to overturn his defeat. Trump has been pressuring state legislators to hold votes invalidating Biden’s electors, trying to “corrupt the US Department of Justice by trying to get Department officials to make deliberately false statements” and repeatedly personally trying to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to subvert democracy with unprecedented objections to a joint session of Congress, it said.
The report also presents some additional evidence to support some of the most explosive testimony in the hearings. Much of that testimony came from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who spoke of Trump’s disdain for supporters who had guns during his impassioned speech outside the White House this morning and his desire to go to the Capitol afterward. Security officials wouldn’t let him in, several witnesses told the panel, leading to an angry exchange in the president’s SUV after the speech. Trump was furious, witnesses said.
- Read more: The FBI arrested Ashland doctor Jacqueline Starr in connection with the January 6 uprising
“The committee’s primary concern was that the president actually intended to personally participate in the January 6 effort at the Capitol, leading the attempt to override the election either from the House, from a stage outside the Capitol, or otherwise,” the report said.
Trump called committee members “thugs and scoundrels” as he continued to falsely argue his 2020 loss.
The report will detail minute-by-minute, as one of the panel’s hearings did, what Trump did — and didn’t do — for about three hours as his supporters beat police and stormed the Capitol. Trump angered the crowd at a rally this morning and then did nothing to stop his supporters for several hours as he watched the violence unfold on White House television.
Lawmakers pointed to the evidence of Trump’s actions they still don’t have since that time, including call logs, official journal entries or calls to security officials.
“President Trump did not contact any senior national security officials during the day. Not at the Pentagon, not at the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Capitol Police or D.C. City Hall,” the report said.
There are also no official photos of the president during these hours.
“President Trump appears to have instructed the White House photographer not to take any photos,” the committee wrote in its summary, citing an interview with chief White House photographer Sheala Craighead.
The report is expected to detail the commission’s interviews with numerous aides and associates of the former president – including some of his closest confidants, most of whom testified that he would not listen to anyone who told him he had lost the election and that he refused for hours on Jan. 6 to try to stop the violence.
The panel also raised questions about whether some aides were pressured by Trump or his other allies not to participate during their interviews with the committee.
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