By Mary Clare Jalonick -
The Associated Press
The House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol will release its 800-page final report Wednesday, concluding that then-President Donald Trump criminally conspired to overturn his election loss in 2020 and "provoked his supporters to violence" on Capitol Hill with false claims of non-existent voter fraud.
The resulting insurrection by Trump supporters threatened democracy with "horrific" brutality toward law enforcement and "put lawmakers' lives at risk," according to the executive summary of the report released this week.
“The central cause was one man, former President Donald Trump, who was followed by many others,” the report states, “none of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.”
[The IRS didn't keep an eye on Trump's taxes as it should]
Explosion caused by police ammunition in the assault. Leah Millis / REUTERS
The committee's findings, divided into eight chapters, will largely reflect the outcome of nine hearings this year, presenting evidence from more than 1,000 interviews and millions of documents.
Among other things, they recount the unprecedented campaign that Trump carried out to try to overturn his defeat and the pressure he exerted on state officials, the Department of Justice, congressmen and his own vice president, Mike Pence, to change the vote.
The panel released an executive summary of the final report on Monday, detailing how Trump magnified false claims on social media and in public appearances, encouraging his supporters to travel to Washington DC and protest Joe Biden's victory.
The report recounts how he asked them to "fight like hell" at a large rally outside the White House on the morning of January 6 and subsequently made virtually no effort to stop the violence, despite his supporters clashing with police. They entered the Capitol and forced the lawmakers inside to seek shelter for their lives.
It was a "multiple conspiracy", says the parliamentary commission.
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"A Reckoning"
The report caps four years of efforts by the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives to hold Trump to account, before ceding power to Republicans in two weeks after losing the midterm elections.
Democrats impeached Trump twice - both times he was acquitted by the Senate - and investigated his finances, his business, his ties abroad and his family.
But the 18-month-long investigation on Jan. 6 has been the most personal for lawmakers, most of whom were on Capitol Hill when Biden's supporters stormed the building and disrupted Biden's certification of victory. .
Though the long-term impact of the inquiries remains to be seen -- most Republicans have remained loyal to the former president -- the committee hearings were watched by tens of millions of people this summer.
And 44% of voters in the November elections said the future of democracy was their main consideration at the polls, according to a poll conducted by The Associated Press news agency.
“The committee is nearing the end of its work, but as a country we remain in strange and uncharted waters,” panel chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) said Monday at a meeting to approve the report and recommend criminal charges. against Trump.
“We have never had a president launch a violent attempt to block the transfer of power.
I think almost two years later, this is still a time for reflection and a reckoning," he added.
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The committee recommended four criminal charges be filed against Trump, including one for insurrection, but only the Justice Department has the power to prosecute him.
Although the main points are known, the January 6 report will provide new details about how things happened from the hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents the commission has collected.
Transcripts and some videos are expected to be released in the next two weeks, before Democrats cede control of the House to Republicans on Jan. 3, the date on which the panel will dissolve.
"I guarantee there will be some very interesting new information in the report and even more in the transcripts," Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told CBS News on Wednesday.
The summary of the report describes how Trump refused to accept the result of the 2020 election and conspired to illegally overturn his defeat.
Trump lobbied state lawmakers to overrule Biden's voters;
he tried to "corrupt the Department of Justice by trying to recruit officials to make false statements on purpose";
And, repeatedly, he tried to persuade his vice president to endorse him by raising unprecedented objections in Congress.
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He presents some additional evidence to support some of the more explosive testimony from the hearings.
One of the most far-reaching was that of former White House adviser Cassidy Hutchinson, who recounted Trump's contempt for gun-wielding supporters as he delivered his fiery speech outside the White House that morning, and his desire to go to the Capitol afterwards. .
The Secret Service did not let him go, according to several witnesses, which led to an angry exchange in the presidential vehicle after the speech, with a furious Trump.
“The main concern of the Committee was that the president really intended to be personally involved in the January 6 efforts on Capitol Hill, leading the attempt to overturn the election, either from within the House of Representatives, from a stage outside of the Capitol or in another way”, underlines the report.
Trump has branded the committee members "thugs and scoundrels" and has continued to spread lies about his defeat.
The report will detail minute by minute, as one of the panel hearings did, what Trump was doing — and not doing — for about three hours as his supporters beat up police and stormed the Capitol.
The then-president angered his supporters at the rally that morning and then did little to stop them over the course of several hours, despite following the riots on television from inside the White House.
Lawmakers regret that certain evidence about what Trump did, such as call records, is not yet available.
“Trump did not contact a single senior Homeland Security official that day.
Neither in the Pentagon, nor in the Department of Homeland Security, nor in the Department of Justice, nor in the FBI, nor in the Capitol Police Department, nor in the Washington Mayor's Office," they stress.
Official photographs of the president at those times are also missing.
“Trump appears to have instructed the White House photographer not to take any photographs,” the committee wrote in its summary, citing an interview with White House chief photographer Shealah Craighead.