Washington: Rioters trample over woman at Capitol building
Donald Trump has been accused of a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 US election results by a congressional panel investigating US Capitol riots.
The House of Representatives’ January 6 committee has released its final report, based on the interviews of thousands of witnesses, millions of pages of documents and 10 hearings.
The committee’s final report alleges 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.
The witnesses – ranging from many of Trump’s closest aides to law enforcement to some of the rioters themselves – said Trump’s actions in the weeks ahead of the attack and how his wide-ranging efforts to overturn his defeat influenced those who pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The central cause of the insurrection was “one man”, Donald Trump, says the report.
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.
Donald Trump responded to the report on Truth Social: “The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C., show the ‘Peacefully and Patriotically’ words I used, or study the reason for the protest, Election Fraud. WITCH HUNT!”
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”.
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 defence of our Constitution.”
The full report asserts Donald Trump engaged in ‘multi-part conspiracy’. (Image: GETTY)
The report is broken down into eight chapters and asserts, largely as panel hearings did last summer, that Trump and his advisors devised a plan 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.
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Nearly two years ago, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building. (Image: GETTY)
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 US 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 Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
The report accuses law enforcement and intelligence agencies of failures, 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 jeopardised 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,” Democratic Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson wrote.
“Donald Trump lit that fire,” he said. “But in the weeks beforehand, the kindling he ultimately ignited was amassed in plain sight.”
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 wilfully remained idle even as others, including his own Vice President, acted.”
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The House Select Committee released its full report on the Capitol riot. (Image: GETTY)
During those hours, Vice President Mike 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.
The report says “virtually everyone on the White House staff” interviewed by the committee condemned a tweet by Trump at 2.24 pm 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.”
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.
