January 6th Committee Releases Final Report – Deadline

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Days after the Committee on January 6 recommended four surprising criminal charges against former president Donald Trump, the panel tonight released its final report.

“Our country has come too far to allow a defeated president to become a successful dictator by undermining our democratic institutions, inciting violence, and, as I have seen, opening the door to in our country hate and bigotry threaten equality and justice for all Americans,” Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson wrote in his opening statement.

Here is the 845-page document.

CNN and MSNBC covered the release as breaking news, but Fox News largely avoided it when the report arrived during the 9 PM hour of The Ingraham Angle.

The leak came after the committee began releasing transcripts of interviews with the committee, including those with Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to chief of staff Mark Meadows, who detailed the pressure placed on him by loyalists. of Trump not to recall the major details of the events leading up. until January 6th. Hutchinson, who was one of the committee’s star witnesses, told the panel in September that Stefan Passantino, a former Trump White House lawyer who initially represented him, wanted him to focus on protecting Trump when he went to committee. He also said that his boss, Meadows, told him that Trump knew he had lost the election but continued with his false election claims.

The 18-month investigation comes to a conclusion as control of Congress shifts to Republicans next month. GOP leadership has criticized the committee’s work and shunned Republicans among its members: Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, both of whom were not elected.

As he did earlier this week, Cheney wrote in the report that among the “most embarrassing findings from our hearings” was testimony that Trump sat in “the room outside the Oval Office watching the violent chaos in the Capitol on television.”

“For hours, he would not issue a public statement instructing his supporters to disperse and leave the Capitol, despite urgent pleas from his White House staff and dozens of others to do so this,” Cheney wrote, calling Trump’s behavior a “dereliction of duty” and adding, “No person who behaves like that at that moment at that time can ever serve in any position of authority in our country. He is unfit for any office.”

Much of the information from the report was made public during 11 hearings over the summer and fall, laying out a narrative of the Jan. 6 attack in a way that captivated much of the Washington media and garnered a solid audience. . Some of the details, such as text messages Fox News host Sean Hannity sent to Mark Meadows, urging him to try to get Trump to issue a statement as the attack unfolded, were released in last year.

But the report, like the hearings themselves, is designed to lay out its findings in an easy-to-understand way, albeit at great length. The first chapter of the report is titled “The Big Lie,” which became shorthand for Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The chapter begins with Trump declaring victory on Election Night, even though millions mail-in votes, expected to favor Joe Biden, have not yet been counted. “So, the President of the United States did something he planned to do long before election day: he lied,” the report said. The only adviser who supported Trump’s intention to declare victory that night was Rudy Giuliani, who campaign adviser Jason Miller testified was “really drunk” that night.

On Monday, the committee voted to refer to the Justice Department four criminal charges against Trump, including obstruction of an official proceeding; conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to make a false statement; and inciting, aiding or abetting an insurrection.

“From the beginning of its hearings, the Committee explained that President Trump and several other individuals had made a series of very specific plans, ultimately with many separate elements, but all with one dominant purpose: to discredit, obstruct, or influence the counting of electoral votes on January 6th, thereby overturning the legal results of the election.”

The committee also issued a set of recommendations, including barring Trump and others from holding office. They note that under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, “an individual who has previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, but who has ‘engaged in an insurrection’ against the same, or has given ‘aid or comfort to the enemy. of the Constitution’ may be disqualified from holding future federal or state office.”

Other recommendations include giving congressional committees a ’cause of action’ to enforce its subpoenas in federal court, because some potential witnesses did not comply. Other recommendations concern intelligence sharing between federal agencies on violent extremism threats. A proposal, to clarify that the vice president’s role in counting electoral votes is ceremonial, is poised to become law. It was included as part of the year-end omnibus bill, which passed the Senate today and will be voted on by the House on Friday.

Another recommendation concerns social and traditional media, targeting the wealth of misinformation spread by right wing commentators, podcast hosts and other outlets. Two election system companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, sued Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network for billions of dollars over post-election claims made by hosts and guests.

“The Committee agrees that individuals remain responsible for their own actions, including their own criminal actions,” the report said. “But congressional jurisdictional committees must continue to examine the policies of media companies that have had the effect of radicalizing their consumers, including by inciting people to attack their own country.”

The report cited instances in which Trump falsely claimed Dominion was involved in election fraud, but the former president has not yet been named by the company as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit.

According to the report, among those who weighed in on the effort to overturn the results was Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy.

According to the report, Ruddy “has the ear of President Trump and reportedly spoke with him by phone at least four times before December. He passed a memo to other close advisers to the President recommending that the Trump team will encourage one or more Republican-led chambers in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and even Minnesota to ‘select a separate competitive State slate of Electors,’ which the memo predicted could be “January 6th is a cat-fight in Congress with VP Pence in charge.” The report also included several references to Maria Bartiromo’s interview with Trump on Nov. 29, 2020, his first since the election, in which he again made many baseless statements about the election.

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