Donald Trump was engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the legal results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a report by US politicians.
The House of Representatives Jan. 6 Committee released its final report, based on interviews with more than 1,000 witnesses, 10 hearings and millions of pages of documents.
Rising to more than 814 pages, the seven Democrats and two Republicans documented their 18-month investigation into the insurgency at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
They concluded that the evidence “leads to one overriding and direct conclusion: the central cause of January 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed.
“None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.”
The investigation detailed Mr Trump’s actions in the weeks leading up to the insurgency and how his campaign to reverse his election defeat influenced those involved.
He said that between Joe Biden’s election victory and the certification of that victory – on the day of the insurrection – Mr. Trump or those around him “engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of education, pressure or condemnation public or private, targeting either state legislators, or state or local election administrators, to nullify state election results.”
“Knowing that he and his supporters had lost dozens of election lawsuits, and despite his own senior advisers refuting his claims of voter fraud and urging him to concede electoral defeat, Donald Trump refused to accept the legal outcome. of the 2020 elections,” the report said. said.
“Rather than honoring his constitutional obligation to ‘see that the laws are faithfully executed,’ President Trump instead conspired to overturn the election result.”
Read more:
Donald Trump’s casting as an arch-villain on the Capitol riots isn’t what his political comeback needs
January 6 committee recommends criminal charges against Donald Trump for Capitol insurrection
US House of Representatives Committee votes to release Donald Trump’s tax returns
The committee said Mr Trump lobbied states, federal officials, politicians and even Vice President Mike Pence in an effort to get his way.
They said his allegations of voter fraud were widely circulated on social media, building on the distrust of government he had nurtured during his four years as president.
And he did little to stop his followers when they violently took matters into their own hands.
The report found that 187 minutes passed between the end of a speech by Mr. Trump urging his supporters to march on Capitol Hill and his first effort to disperse the rioters, which was done by reassuring them: “We love you are very special.”
Several of his aides begged him to say something stronger, but he didn’t.
The report also detailed law enforcement and intelligence failings, but said these did not lead to the insurgency.
Read more:
Storming the Capitol – four hours of chaos in Washington DC
Analysis: Why the January 6 committee vote matters to Trump
Retired cop gets longest rioting sentence in US Capitol for assaulting officer
Photo: AP
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said in a foreword to the report, “The President of the United States inciting a mob to march on Capitol Hill and obstruct the business of Congress is not a scenario that our communities across the intelligence and law enforcement envisioned for this country.”
The report recommends that Congress create “a mechanism for evaluating” whether to bar those named in the report from future federal or state office.
The panel also referred its investigation to the Justice Department, recommending that the department investigate the former president on four crimes, including aiding an insurrection, but those referrals have no legal standing.
Mr Trump called the report “highly partisan” and a “witch hunt”.
Writing on his Truth Social platform, he said: ‘The highly partisan de-selection committee report deliberately fails to mention Pelosi’s failure to heed my recommendation to use troops in DC, to show the words’ peacefully and patriotically "which I used, or to investigate the reason for the protest, election fraud. WITCH HUNT!"
