January 6, the committee issued its final report

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Brought by US Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) final committee report on his departure after the final public meeting of the US House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Attack on the US Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, US, December 19, 2022.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

A January 6 House select committee released its long-awaited final report on Thursday, ending an 18-month investigation into the 2021 break-in of the US Capitol by a violent group of former President Donald Trump’s supporters.

The damning 845-page report was released three days after the bipartisan committee voted unanimously to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation and possible prosecution over his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss. to President Joe Biden.

Among the recommendations is that congressional committees with such authority consider creating a “formal mechanism for reviewing whether to bar” Trump from holding future federal office because of evidence that he violated his taking a constitutional oath to support the US Constitution while participating in an insurrection.

The report comes weeks after Trump announced he would seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024.

“Our country has come too far to allow a defeated President to become a successful tyrant by undermining our democratic institutions, inciting violence, and, as I have seen, opening the door to those in our country whose hatred and bigotry threaten equality and justice for all Americans,” wrote Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., in a foreword to the report.

The second chairman of the committee, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, wrote in her own foreword, “Every President in our history has defended this smooth transfer of authority, except one.”

“January 6, 2021 will be the first time an American President has reneged on his Constitutional duty to transfer power peacefully to the next,” Cheney wrote.

The first of the report’s eight chapters is titled “The Big Lie,” a reference to Trump’s repeated false claims that he won the election.

That chapter notes that Trump worked even before Election Day to “delegitimize the election process” by suggesting that it would be harmed by ballot fraud, particularly in relation to mail-in voting that is being used has been expanded due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The second chapter, titled “I Just Want to Find 11,780 Votes,” details Trump’s attempt to overthrow the Electoral College, the body that actually chooses the winner of presidential elections based on popular vote victories by candidates in individual states, and parts of two states.

The title refers to what Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a phone call on January 2, 2021, in which the president pressed Raffensperger to take steps that would nullify the popular victory of Biden in that state.

That chapter also details the massive campaign by Trump and his allies to get Republican-controlled legislatures in states won by Biden to decertify the election results, or to replace the records with voters in the Electoral College.

“The Select Committee estimates that in the two months between the November election and the January 6 uprising, President Trump or his inner circle engaged in at least 200 apparent public actions or private outreach, pressure, or condemnation, targeting either State or State legislators or local election administrators, to overturn State election results,” the report said.

“These include at least: 68 meetings, attempted or connected telephone calls, or text messages, each aimed at one or more State or local officials; 18 instances of known public speeches, with language targeting one or more such officials; and 125 social media posts by President Trump or senior aides targeting one or more such officials, whether explicitly or not, and mostly from his own account,” the report said.

Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Jon Cherry | Getty Images

The following chapters outline how Trump and his allies intend to obtain alternative electoral rolls for him to present to Congress over the actual records won by Biden, their efforts to cast doubt on the Department of Justice election integrity, and convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify some states’ Electoral College rolls.

The pressure plan on Pence is designed to throw the decision on who wins the election in the House of Representatives. Despite Democrats holding a majority of seats in that chamber at the time, Republicans would have handed Trump the victory because they held the majority of state delegations, which each get one vote in under the system.

The final three chapters focus on the lead-up to the Capitol riot, Trump’s “dereliction of duty” by refusing to fire the mob, and an analysis of the attack on the Capitol.

Cheney, in his foreword to the report, said, “What most of the public did not know before our investigation was this: Donald Trump’s campaign officials told him in advance that his fraud claims were false.”

“Senior officials at Donald Trump’s Justice Department who were each appointed by Donald Trump himself investigated the allegations and repeatedly told him that his fraud claims were false,” Cheney wrote .

“Donald Trump’s White House lawyers also told him that his fraud claims were false. From the start, Donald Trump’s fraud allegations were fabricated nonsense, designed to victimize the patriot of millions of men and women who love our country.”

In its recommendations, the committee on January 6 urged the Senate to pass the Electoral Count Act, which the House has already passed. The law would reaffirm that a vice president does not have the authority or discretion to reject an official list of presidential electors submitted by the governors of their states.

The panel also said that courts and bar disciplinary bodies that regulate the conduct of lawyers “should continue to scrutinize the conduct of the lawyers described in this Report.”

“Lawyers should not have the discretion to use their law licenses to undermine the constitutional and statutory process for the peace-full transfer of power to our government,” the report said.

In a recommendation titled “Violent Extremism,” the report said, ‘Federal agencies with intelligence and security missions, including the Secret Service, should … advance government-wide strategies to combat the threat of violent extremism. activity. of all extremist groups, including white nationalist groups and violent anti-government groups while respecting the civil rights and First Amendment civil liberties of all citizens.”

Members of the Oath Keepers militia group among supporters of US President Donald Trump, on the steps of the US Capitol, in Washington, January 6, 2021.

Jim Bourg | Reuters

The Jan. 6 panel began sharing its evidence with the DOJ, which last month appointed a special counsel to investigate whether Trump or others unlawfully obstructed the transition of power to Biden.

Without Trump’s encouragement, the Jan. 6 riot “would never have happened,” the panel’s chair, Thompson, said in an interview Thursday on MSNBC. “It would have been the normal transfer of power that we do every four years when there is a presidential election.”

“Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but under no circumstances do you tear down city hall or the courthouse, and, God forbid, the United States Capitol,” Thompson said. “It was just something that I think for most Americans it was beyond imagination… And many people still cannot imagine why our people would do that.”

Both the DOJ and House probes focused, among other things, on the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol and forced lawmakers and Pence to flee the chambers of Congress.

Vice President Mike Pence (R) is joined by Sgt. at Arms Michael Stenger (L), from the House of Representatives to the Senate at the US Capitol after a challenge to be presented in a joint session to confirm President-elect Joe Biden, in Washington, US, January 6, 2021 .

Mike Theiler | Reuters

The raid delayed a joint session of Congress being held to confirm Biden’s victory in the Electoral College.

Pence, who presided over that session, resisted pressure from Trump and others to refuse to accept the Electoral College slate of several swing states that gave Biden his margin of victory.

The House committee conducted more than 1,000 witness interviews, which included Trump’s White House aides and lawyers, some of his adult children, and his close allies. The panel also gathered hundreds of thousands of documents as part of its investigation.

Trump spread false claims of election fraud before and after the 2020 election and pursued multiple attempts to reverse his loss to Biden in the weeks after Election Day. His public campaign to do so culminated in a rally outside the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, where he urged people to march with him on the Capitol to pressure Congress to undo the election results.

US President Donald Trump arrives to address supporters from The Ellipse near the White House on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC.

Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images

Trump never marched on the Capitol, but instead spent hours at the White House as his supporters attacked police officers inside and outside the Capitol, and swarmed the halls of Congress. Trump did not publicly urge the mob to leave the Capitol until later that afternoon, despite calls from senior White House officials for him to do so.

“You are the commander in chief. You have an attack going on at the Capitol of the United States of America, and nothing?” Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House committee.

“No call? Nothing? Zero?” Milley added.

In its Monday vote, the committee referred Trump to the DOJ for potential prosecution for four crimes, including conspiracy to defraud the US and inciting insurrection.

Separately, a state grand jury in Georgia is collecting evidence for a criminal investigation of Trump by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office for his attempt to ask Georgia election officials to undo Biden’s election victory in that state.

Trump is also under criminal investigation by the DOJ for removing government documents, some of them highly classified, from the White House when he left office.

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