January 6, the panel released the report, describing Trump’s collusion | Donald Trump news

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The final report of a House of Representatives committee on January 6 asserted that former United States President Donald Trump was criminally involved in a multi-faceted conspiracy to overturn the legal results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to prevent his supporters from attacking the Capitol.

The 845-page report (PDF) released Thursday concludes an extraordinary 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection two years ago.

This comes after the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained millions of pages of documents.

Witnesses ranging from many of Trump’s closest aides to law enforcement to some of the rioters themselves detailed Trump’s actions in the weeks leading up to the uprising and how his extensive campaign of pressure to topple the his defeat directly influenced those who brutally pushed the police and smashed the windows and doors of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The main reason is one person, the report says: Trump.

The insurrection seriously threatened democracy and put the lives of American lawmakers at risk, the nine-member panel concluded.

In a foreword to the report, outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the findings should be a clarion call to all Americans: to guard our Democracy carefully and cast our vote only for those who are obedient to their defense in our Constitution.

The eight-chapter report of findings tells the story much as did panel hearings earlier this year that described many aspects of the grandiose plan devised by Trump and his advisers to try to nullify President Joe Bidens election victory.

The final report on the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, photographed on December 22, 2022 [Jon Elswick/AP Photo]

The lawmakers described Trump’s pressure on states, federal officials, lawmakers and then Vice President Mike Pence to game the system or break the law.

Trump’s repeated, false claims of mass voter fraud resonated with his supporters, the committee said, and were amplified on social media, building on the distrust of government he fostered during his four that year in office. He also did little to stop the attackers when they resorted to violence and stormed the Capitol.

This is the total summary of 18 months of work and hearings, more than 1,000 witnesses, more than a million pages, it was said, of documents, said Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi, reporting from Washington.

It follows the same narrative structure we saw in the committee hearings, weaving that story of how Donald Trump, even as the votes were being counted on election night, hatched a plan to try and steal the election , said Rattansi.

He didn’t want to look like a loser. He deliberately spread misinformation, he pressured the vice president, members of Congress, local state officials for extra votes, fudged what the constitutional process was, and in the end he failed, he said. .

Rattansi said the congressional committee could not launch criminal proceedings, but said the report could prove irresistible to prosecutors.

The massive, damning report comes as Trump is running for president again and faces multiple federal investigations, including investigations into his role in the insurgency and the possession of classified documents at his Florida estate.

This week is particularly fraught for the former president, as a House committee is expected to release his tax returns after he fought for years to keep them private.

Some Republicans also blamed Trump for a worse-than-expected showing in the midterm elections, which left him in his most politically vulnerable state since he won the 2016 election.

The report is a final act for House Democrats who have ceded power to Republicans in less than two weeks and spent much of their four years in power investigating Trump.

Democrats have impeached Trump twice, the second time a week after the insurrection. The Senate acquitted him both times. Other Democratic-led probes have investigated his finances, businesses, foreign relations and his family.

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