January 6, the panel released the report, describing Trump’s ‘conspiracy’

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WASHINGTON (AP) The final report by House committees on Jan. 6 asserts that 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 stop his actions. supporter in the attack on the Capitol, which ended an extraordinary event. 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection two years ago.

The 814-page report released Thursday came 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 in Jan. 6, 2021.

The main reason for January 6th was that one person, former President Donald Trump, followed by many others, was reading the report. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.

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 Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the findings should be a clarion call to all Americans: to guard our Democracy carefully and cast our votes only for those who are loyal in their defense of our Constitution.

The eight-chapter report of findings tells the story largely of what panel hearings did this summer that describe many aspects of the extraordinary plan Trump and his advisers have devised to try to repeal the President Joe Bidens victory. Lawmakers described his pressure on states, federal officials, lawmakers and 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. And he did nothing to stop them when they resorted to violence and stormed the Capitol.

The massive, damning report comes as Trump is running for president again and also faces multiple federal investigations, including probes into his role in the insurgency and the presence of classified documents at his Florida estate. This week is particularly fraught for him, as a House committee is expected to release his tax returns after he fought for years to keep them private. And Trump has been blamed by Republicans for a worse-than-expected showing in the midterm elections, leaving him at his most politically vulnerable since he won the 2016 election.

It’s also a final act for House Democrats who hand over power to Republicans in less than two weeks, and have spent most 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, his businesses, his foreign ties and his family.

On Monday, a panel of seven Democrats and two Republicans officially handed over their investigation to the Justice Department, recommending the department investigate the former president on four crimes, including aiding and abetting an insurrection. While the criminal referrals have no legal standing, they are a final statement from the committee after its extensive, year-and-a-half investigation.

Trump tried to discredit the report, blasting committee members as thugs and scoundrels as he continued to argue that he would lose in 2020.

In response to the criminal referral panels, Trump said: These people don’t understand that when they go after me, freedom-loving people gather around me. It makes me stronger.

The committee has also begun releasing hundreds of transcripts of interviews. On Thursday, the panel released transcripts of two closed-door 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 the Trump’s efforts to influence the election results and indifference to the violence as it happened.

In two interviews, both conducted after his July appearance at the hearing, he described how many of Trump’s allies, including his lawyer, pressured him not to speak much during his committee interviews.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the Capitol insurrection at https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Farnoush Amiri, Lisa Mascaro, Jill Colvin, Nomaan Merchant and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

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