After an extraordinary 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection two years ago, the final report of the US House January 6 committee asserts that former President Donald Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.
The panel conducted ten hearings, interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, and obtained millions of pages of documents before releasing the 845-page report on Thursday.
Witnesses included some of the rioters themselves as well as many of Trump’s closest aides to law enforcement. They described Trump’s actions in the weeks leading up to the insurrection and how his extensive pressure campaign to overturn his defeat directly influenced those who brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the Capitol’s windows and doors on January 6, 2021.
According to the report, “one man” was the primary cause: Trump.
The nine-member panel came to the conclusion that the uprising posed a grave threat to democracy and “put the lives of American lawmakers at risk.”
In a foreword to the report, active Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the discoveries ought to be a “clarion call to all Americans: to keep an eye on our democracy and only vote for those who faithfully uphold our Constitution.”
The eight chapters of findings in the report tell the story largely in the same way that the panel’s hearings this summer did, describing the many facets of the amazing plan that Trump and his advisers came up with to try to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory. Legislators describe his efforts to persuade states, federal officials, legislators, and Vice President Mike Pence to cheat the system or break the law.
Read: US committee proposes criminal charges against Trump on January 6
‘False claims’
According to the committee, Trump’s repeated, false claims of widespread voter fraud resonated with his supporters and were amplified on social media, further fostering his distrust of the government throughout his four years in office. When they turned violent and stormed the Capitol, he did little to stop them.
The massive and damning report comes at a time when Trump is running for president again and is also the subject of numerous federal investigations, including inquiries into his role in the uprising and the presence of classified documents at his estate in Florida.
This week is especially difficult for him because he has fought for years to keep his tax returns private, but a House committee is expected to release them. Additionally, Republicans have laid the blame on Trump for a lower-than-anticipated performance in the midterm elections, putting him in his most politically perilous position since winning the election in 2016.
It is also the final act for House Democrats, who will lose control to Republicans in less than two weeks and have spent most of their four years in power investigating Trump. Trump was impeached twice by Democrats, the second time coming a week after the uprising. Both times, the Senate found him not guilty. Other Majority rule drove tests examined his funds, his organizations, his unfamiliar ties and his loved ones.
The seven Democrats and two Republicans on the panel officially handed over their investigation to the Justice Department on Monday, recommending that the department investigate the former president for four offenses, one of which was aiding an insurrection. The criminal referrals are the committee’s final statement after its extensive, one-and-a-half-year investigation, despite the fact that they lack legal standing.
Trump has attempted to discredit the report by referring to committee members as “thugs and scoundrels” while continuing to dispute his defeat in 2020.
Because of the board’s criminal references, Trump said: ” These individuals do not comprehend that when they pursue me, supporters of freedom unite around me. It gives me strength.
The panel has likewise started to deliver many records of its meetings. The transcripts of two interviews with former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified in person at one of the televised hearings over the summer and described in vivid detail Trump’s efforts to influence the election results and indifference toward the violence as it occurred, were made available by the panel on Thursday. Hutchinson had previously worked for the White House.
Source: AP
