The US House of Representatives commission investigating the attack on the Capitol concluded 18 months of work on Monday during which they conducted more than a thousand interviews, reviewed a million documents and summoned some 100 witnesses.
To these numbers, we must add new ones: at the end of the last session, before its foreseeable dismantling with the arrival at the beginning of 2023 of the new Congress, with a conservative majority, its nine members published an executive summary of 154 pages of their investigation. (the full report will arrive on Wednesday), in which its nine members detail 17 conclusions that they consider proven and that have led them to ask the Department of Justice to criminally prosecute Donald Trump for four crimes: incitement to insurrection, obstruction of a official procedure of Congress,
On page 7 of the executive summary, one can read: “The ultimate cause of January 6 was a single man, former President Trump, who was followed by many others.
Nothing that happened on that day would have happened if it hadn't been for him."
The document offers a review of the evidence that they have been sharing with the public in the 10 televised hearings that they have organized between June and October.
There are no great news, although there are some juicy details, such as an inventory of the weapons confiscated that day at the rally called by Trump in the vicinity of the White House.
“The Secret Service obtained a real booty among the 28,000 spectators who passed through the security arches: 242 canisters of pepper spray, 269 knives or blades, 18 brass knuckles, 18 electroshock pistols, six bulletproof vests, three gas masks , 30 batons or blunt instruments, and 17 miscellaneous items such as scissors, needles, or screwdrivers.
Thousands of people deliberately stayed away from those security arches.
Many others carried firearms.
These are the 17 points that summarize the conclusions of the investigation.
1.
The commission accuses the former president of “deliberately spreading false accusations of fraud related to the 2020 elections with the intent to annul those elections” and, incidentally, asking his supporters for money.
He also links those efforts to "the violence on January 6," which ended with an assault that left five dead and hundreds injured.
2.
Likewise, the Republican leader knew that "he and his allies had lost dozens of electoral demands", and yet he refused to accept his defeat.
"Instead of fulfilling his constitutional obligation to 'see that the laws are faithfully enforced,' President Trump conspired to annul the election result," the committee document states.
Pages of the document of conclusions of the commission that investigates the assault on the Capitol.
Jon Elswick (AP)
3.
The commission also considers that Trump pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to do something that was not within his power: refuse to certify the recount of the electoral votes in Congress on January 6.
During the insurrection, Trump supporters from all over the United States marched towards the Capitol shouting "Let's hang Mike Pence", while the still president watched everything on television without lifting a finger, despite knowing that it was the the only one with the capacity to stop this violence.
4.
"Attempted to corrupt the United States Department of Justice" by trying to push its officials to "make willfully false statements to assist in their effort to overturn the election result."
Not only that: Trump then "offered the acting attorney general position to Jeff Clark knowing that Clark intended to spread fraudulent information."
5.
According to inquiries made public Monday, Trump pressured state lawmakers and officials to tamper with the legitimate result of the November 2020 election. Those attempts were especially aggressive in Georgia, where an Atlanta court-appointed grand jury is investigating the spurious intentions of the tycoon, who even called the Secretary of State by phone to ask him to seek “11,780 votes”, one more than those that separated him from Biden.
6.
Trump also “oversaw an effort to obtain and transmit false election certificates to Congress and the National Archives” in Washington.
7.
And he lobbied several members of the Republican Party in Congress to help him in his crusade not to certify electoral votes.
8.
The investigation concludes that the former president gave false information in a letter addressed to a federal court.
9.
Building on those bogus electoral theft theories, he called thousands of his supporters to a rally on January 6 in Washington.
He knew many of them were armed "and angry," and yet he encouraged them to march on Capitol Hill to "take back their country."
This Monday, the day the committee called for Trump's impeachment, was also the two-year anniversary of one of his most famous tweets (and the competition is really tough there): “Big protest in DC on January 6th.
Do not miss
It will be wild, ”he wrote then.
10.
Once the assault began, he repeatedly refused to send a message to the insurgents to stop the violence.
"Instead, he watched the violent attack on television," the report says.
Specifically, 187 minutes passed, which hundreds of parliamentarians spent hiding inside the Capitol, until Trump recorded and broadcast a video in which he called his people to go home.
12.
It also considers it proven that all these actions were part of a "conspiracy in various parts" to stay in power.
13.
The committee understands that the intelligence services knew that something was brewing before January 6, and that they shared the information they had with the Executive, the secret service and the National Security Council.
14.
That information was clear about one thing: there were no plans by far-left groups, such as Antifa, to participate in a violent counter-protest on the day Biden's electoral victory was certified, a process that had always been carried out peacefully.
15.
The executive summary, which has fifty pages of notes, also accounts for what US intelligence and law enforcement were unaware: the scope of the "ongoing planning of President Trump, John Eastman, Rudolph Giuliani and its associates to annul certified election results.”
Nor did they "anticipate the taunt that President Trump would offer in the crowd in his speech that day."
16.
The committee highlights the "courage" with which the members of the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police of the capital.
Neither body saw the violence that would ensue coming."
17.
Finally, the nine members of the commission consider that "Trump had the authority and responsibility to direct the deployment of the National Guard in the District of Columbia, but he never gave any order to deploy the National Guard on January 6 or any other day".
“He also did not order any federal agency to help.
Because the authority to deploy the National Guard had been delegated to the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense could deploy the Guard, which he ultimately did."
“The Committee has found no evidence that Defense intentionally delayed the deployment of the National Guard, although it acknowledges there were some in the department with genuine concerns, who advised caution,
The text of the bipartisan commission also supports the regulatory amendment contemplated by the Presidential Election Reform Law.
It is a project presented by two members of the committee: the Republican Liz Cheney, from Wyoming, and the Democrat from California, Zoe Lofgren.
It seeks to make it difficult to annul a presidential election by amending the Electoral Count Act of 1887. It also limits the role of the vice president to merely testimonial during the process.
After passing the process in September in the House of Representatives, it is expected to be voted on in the Senate this Wednesday, as part of an omnibus spending law.
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