WASHINGTON (AP) — The House of Representatives’ Jan. 6 committee released its final report Thursday on the “unimaginable” 2021 attack on the Capitol, a mob attack by supporters of defeated president Donald Trump that has swept the nation. shock and the fragility of American democracy.
The 814-page report provides a gripping narrative of Trump’s months-long effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and includes 11 recommendations for Congress and others to consider strengthening the nation’s institutions against future insurgency attempts .
The panel set out to compile a record for history. Along with the report, it releases dozens of witness transcripts of the more than 1,000 interviews with surprising new details. This week it made an unprecedented criminal referral to a former US president for prosecution.
President Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in the foreword “what if” questions persist.
“The President of the United States inciting a crowd to march on the Capitol and obstructing the work of Congress is not the scenario our intelligence and law enforcement communities envisioned for this country,” he said. “Before January 6, it was unthinkable.”
EIGHT CHAPTERS
From the “big lie” of Trump’s November 2020 election night allegations of stolen elections to the bloody siege on January 6, 2021, the report details the beginning and end of the mob onslaught that unfolded in front of the entire world.
It details how Trump and his allies engaged in a “multi-pronged” plan to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election — first through lawsuits and then, when those failed, by compiling voter rolls to secure Joe’s victory. to challenge Biden.
As Congress prepared to convene Jan. 6 to certify the election, Trump called a crowd to Washington for his “Stop the Steal” rally at the White House.
“When Donald Trump pointed them to the Capitol and told them to ‘fight like hell,’ that’s exactly what they did,” Thompson wrote. “Donald Trump lit that fire. But in the weeks leading up to it, the kindling he eventually lit was collected in plain sight.
NEW DETAILS, PRESS
Following blockbuster public hearings, the report and accompanying materials provide more detailed accounts of key aspects of the Trump team’s plan to overturn the election, join the mafia at the Capitol and, once the committee with the investigation began, putting pressure on those who would testify against him.
Among dozens of new testimonies Thursday was the release of a never-before-seen account by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson detailing a stunning campaign by Trump’s allies who encouraged her to remain “loyal,” as she testified to the panel .
The report said the commission estimates that in the two months between the November election and the January 6 attack, “Trump or his inner circle engaged in at least 200 apparent public or private actions, pressure or condemnation, directed against lawmakers of both states. or state or local election administrators, to overturn the state election results.”
BEHIND THE SCENES
The report also details Trump’s inaction as his loyalists violently stormed the building.
A Secret Service official testified to the committee that Trump’s determination to go to the Capitol put agents on high alert.
“(We) all knew … that this would go to something else if he physically walked to the Capitol,” said an unidentified employee. “I don’t know if you want to use the word ‘rebellion’, ‘coup’ or whatever. We all knew this was going to turn from a normal democratic… public event into something different.”
When the president returned to the White House after speaking to his supporters, he asked an aide if they had seen his remarks on television.
“Sir, they cut it off because they are rioting at the Capitol,” the staffer said, according to the report.
Trump asked what that meant, and got the same answer. “Really?” Trump then asked. “Okay, let’s go see.”
PROTECTION OF DEMOCRACY
The report makes 11 recommendations to Congress and others to protect American democracy and its tradition of peaceful transfer of presidential power from one leader to another.
The first, a revision of the Electoral Count Act, is on course to become law in the year-end spending bill that will receive final approval in Congress this week.
The committee also made recommendations to the Justice Department to prosecute Trump and others on conspiracy to commit public fraud and other possible charges. It also referred the former president to prosecution for “aiding and aiding and abetting an insurgency.”
Other changes may be within reach or prove more elusive. Among them, the report recommends strengthening security around major congressional events, reviewing oversight of the Capitol’s police force and strengthening federal penalties for certain types of threats against election workers.
One recommendation is that Congress establish a formal mechanism to consider barring individuals from public office if they engage in insurrection or rebellion under the Fourteenth Amendment. It means that those who took an oath to support the Constitution could be disqualified from holding any future federal or state office if they support an insurgency.
RECORD FOR HISTORY
The Jan. 6 commission was created after Congress rebuked an attempt to form an independent 9/11-like commission to investigate the attack on the Capitol. Republicans blocked the idea.
Instead, Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the House to form the committee. In her foreword to the report, she said it should be “a clarion call to all Americans: to vigilantly guard our democracy.”
Led by Thompson and Vice Chairman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the panel’s work is intended as a record for the history of what happened during the most serious attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812.
Five people died in the riot and its aftermath, including Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who was shot and killed by police, and Brian Sicknick, a police officer who died the day after his battle with the mob.
Cheney noted that the committee decided that most of its witnesses should be Republicans — the president’s own team and allies. In the report’s foreword, she wrote that history will remember the “courage of a handful of Americans” and those who resisted Trump’s “corrupt pressure.”
For all of them, the committee and the report carried personal weight.
Thompson, a black leader in Congress, noted that the iconic U.S. Capitol, built with enslaved labor, “is itself a fixture in our country’s history, both good and bad…a symbol of our journey to a more perfect union.”
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Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri, Mary Clare Jalonick, Eric Tucker and Nomaan Merchant contributed to this report.
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