|
In this
image
released
in the
final
report
by the
House
select
committee
investigating
the Jan.
6 attack
on the
U.S.
Capitol,
on
Thursday,
Dec. 22,
2022,
President
Donald
Trump
talks on
the
phone to
Vice
President
Mike
Pence
from the
Oval
Office
of the
White
House on
Jan. 6,
2021.
(House
Select
Committee
via AP) |
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READ:
Final
Report
From the
Jan. 6
Committee
(PDF) |
| |
Jan. 6
report:
Trump
'lit
that
fire' of
Capitol
insurrection
apnews.com
WASHINGTON
(AP) —
The
House
Jan. 6
committee’s
final
report
asserts
that
Donald
Trump
criminally
engaged
in a
“multi-part
conspiracy”
to
overturn
the
lawful
results
of the
2020
presidential
election
and
failed
to act
to stop
his
supporters
from
attacking
the
Capitol,
concluding
an
extraordinary
18-month
investigation
into the
former
president
and the
violent
insurrection
two
years
ago.
Trump
“lit
that
fire,”
the
committee’s
chairman,
Mississippi
Rep.
Bennie
Thompson,
writes.
The
814-page
report
released
late
Thursday
comes
after
the
panel
interviewed
more
than
1,000
witnesses,
held 10
hearings
and
obtained
more
than a
million
pages of
documents.
The
witnesses
—
ranging
from
many of
Trump’s
closest
aides to
law
enforcement
to some
of the
rioters
themselves
—
detailed
Trump’s
“premeditated”
actions
in the
weeks
ahead of
the
attack
and how
his
wide-ranging
efforts
to
overturn
his
defeat
directly
influenced
those
who
brutally
pushed
past the
police
and
smashed
through
the
windows
and
doors of
the
Capitol
on Jan.
6, 2021.
The
central
cause
was “one
man,”
the
report
says:
Trump.
The
insurrection
gravely
threatened
democracy
and “put
the
lives of
American
lawmakers
at
risk,”
the
bipartisan
nine-member
panel
concluded,
offering
so far
the most
definitive
account
of a
dark
chapter
in
modern
American
history.
It
functions
not only
as a
compendium
of the
most
dramatic
moments
of
testimony
from
months
of
hearings,
but also
as a
document
meant to
be
preserved
for
future
generations.
In a
foreword
to the
report,
outgoing
House
Speaker
Nancy
Pelosi
says the
findings
should
be a
“clarion
call to
all
Americans:
to
vigilantly
guard
our
Democracy
and to
give our
vote
only to
those
dutiful
in their
defense
of our
Constitution.”
The
report’s
eight
chapters
tell the
story
largely
as the
panel’s
hearings
did this
summer —
describing
the many
facets
of the
remarkable
plan
that
Trump
and his
advisers
devised
to try
and void
President
Joe
Biden’s
victory.
The
lawmakers
describe
the
former
president’s
pressure
on
states,
federal
officials,
lawmakers
and Vice
President
Mike
Pence to
game the
system
or break
the law.
In the
two
months
between
the
election
and the
insurrection,
the
report
says,
“President
Trump or
his
inner
circle
engaged
in at
least
200
apparent
acts of
public
or
private
outreach,
pressure,
or
condemnation,
targeting
either
State
legislators
or State
or local
election
administrators,
to
overturn
State
election
results.”
Trump’s
repeated,
false
claims
of
widespread
voter
fraud
resonated
with his
supporters,
the
committee
said,
and were
amplified
on
social
media,
building
on the
distrust
of
government
he had
fostered
for his
four
years in
office.
And he
did
little
to stop
them
when
they
resorted
to
violence
and
stormed
the
Capitol,
interrupting
the
certification
of
Biden’s
victory.
The
massive,
damning
report
comes as
Trump is
running
again
for the
presidency
and also
facing
multiple
federal
investigations,
including
probes
of his
role in
the
insurrection
and the
presence
of
classified
documents
at his
Florida
estate.
This
week is
particularly
fraught
for him,
as a
House
committee
said it
will
release
his tax
returns
after he
has
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 in
his most
politically
vulnerable
state
since he
was
elected
in 2016.
In a
series
of
policy
recommendations,
the
seven
Democrats
and two
Republicans
on the
committee
suggest
that
Trump
should
be
barred
from
future
office,
noting
that the
14th
Amendment
to the
U.S.
Constitution
holds
that
anyone
who has
taken an
oath to
uphold
the
Constitution
can be
prevented
from
holding
office
for
engaging
in
insurrection
or
rebellion.
“He is
unfit
for any
office,”
writes
the
committee’s
vice
chairwoman,
Republican
Rep. Liz
Cheney
of
Wyoming.
Posting
on his
social
media
site,
Trump
called
the
report
“highly
partisan”
and
falsely
claimed
it
didn’t
include
his
statement
on Jan.
6 that
his
supporters
should
protest
“peacefully
and
patriotically.”
The
committee
did
include
that
statement,
though,
and
noted
that he
followed
that
comment
with
election
falsehoods
and
charged
language
exhorting
the
crowd to
“fight
like
hell.”
The
report
details
a
multitude
of
failings
by law
enforcement
and
intelligence
agencies,
noting
that
many of
the
rioters
came
with
weapons
and had
openly
planned
for
violence
online.
“The
failure
to
sufficiently
share
and act
upon
that
intelligence
jeopardized
the
lives of
the
police
officers
defending
the
Capitol
and
everyone
in it,”
the
report
says.
At the
same
time,
the
committee
makes an
emphatic
point
that
security
failures
are not
the
primary
cause
for the
insurrection.
“The
President
of the
United
States
inciting
a mob to
march on
the
Capitol
and
impede
the work
of
Congress
is not a
scenario
our
intelligence
and law
enforcement
communities
envisioned
for this
country,”
Thompson
wrote.
“Donald
Trump
lit that
fire,”
Thompson
writes.
“But in
the
weeks
beforehand,
the
kindling
he
ultimately
ignited
was
amassed
in plain
sight.”
The
report
details
Trump’s
inaction
as his
loyalists
were
storming
the
building,
detailing
the
hours
when he
watched
the
violence
on
television
but did
nothing
to stop
it.
A White
House
photographer
snapped
a
picture
of Trump
at 1:21
p.m.,
learning
of the
riot
from the
employee
after he
returned
to the
White
House
after
his
speech —
and
after
his own
security
officials
had
rebuffed
his
efforts
to go to
the
Capitol
himself.
“By that
time, if
not
sooner,
he had
been
made
aware of
the
violent
riot,”
the
report
states.
In
total,
187
minutes
elapsed
between
the time
Trump
finished
his
speech
at the
Ellipse
and his
first
effort
to get
the
rioters
to
disperse,
through
an
eventual
video
message
in which
he asked
his
supporters
to go
home
even as
he
reassured
them,
“We love
you,
you’re
very
special.”
That
inaction
was a
“dereliction
of
duty,”
the
report
says,
noting
that
Trump
had more
power
than any
other
person
as the
nation’s
commander-in-chief.
“He
willfully
remained
idle
even as
others,
including
his own
Vice
President,
acted.”
During
those
hours,
Pence
huddled
in the
Capitol,
begging
security
officials
for a
quicker
National
Guard
response
as
rioters
outside
called
for his
hanging
because
he would
not
illegally
try to
thwart
Biden’s
win. And
inside
the
White
House,
dozens
of
staffers
and
associates
pleaded
with
Trump to
make a
forceful
statement.
But he
did not.
“We all
look
like
domestic
terrorists
now,”
longtime
aide
Hope
Hicks
texted
Julie
Radford,
who
served
as
Ivanka
Trump’s
chief of
staff,
in the
aftermath.
The
report
says
“virtually
everyone
on the
White
House
staff”
interviewed
by the
committee
condemned
a tweet
by Trump
at 2:24
p.m.
that day
— just
as the
rioters
were
first
breaking
into the
Capitol
— that
Vice
President
Mike
Pence
“didn’t
have the
courage
to do
what
should
have
been
done to
protect
our
Country
and our
Constitution.”
“Attacking
the VP?
Wtf is
wrong
with
him,”
Hicks
texted
another
colleague
that
evening.
The
investigation’s
release
is a
final
act for
House
Democrats
who are
ceding
power to
Republicans
in less
than two
weeks,
and have
spent
much of
their
four
years in
power
investigating
Trump.
Democrats
impeached
Trump
twice,
the
second
time a
week
after
the
insurrection.
He was
acquitted
by the
Senate
both
times.
Other
Democratic-led
probes
investigated
his
finances,
his
businesses,
his
foreign
ties and
his
family.
On
Monday,
the
panel
officially
passed
their
investigation
to the
Justice
Department,
recommending
the
department
investigate
the
former
president
on four
crimes,
including
aiding
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-long
probe.
The
committee
has also
begun to
release
hundreds
of
transcripts
of its
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
Trump’s
actions
and
inaction
inside
the
White
House.
In the
two
interviews,
both
conducted
after
her June
appearance
at the
hearing,
Hutchinson
described
how many
of
Trump’s
allies,
including
her
lawyer,
pressured
her not
to say
too much
in her
committee
interviews.
___
Follow
the AP’s
coverage
of the
Capitol
insurrection
at
https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege
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