The full report was published on December 22, 2021. Read here.
The House select committee investigating the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 has concluded that former President Donald Trump was ultimately responsible for the uprising, setting out to the public and to the Department of Justice a collection of evidence as to why he should be prosecuted. multiple crimes.
“That evidence leads to an overwhelmingly simple conclusion: the primary cause of January 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump, who was followed by many others,” the committee writes in a summary of its final report. was released on Monday. “None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.”
The summary describes in detail how Trump tried to overpower, pressure and coerce anyone unwilling to help him overturn his election victory – knowing that many of his schemes were illegal. His relentless arm-twisting included election administrators in key states, senior Justice Department leaders, state legislators, and others. The report even recommends tampering with the committee’s investigation witnesses.
The committee repeatedly uses strong language to describe Trump’s intent: that he “deliberately spread false allegations of fraud” to aid his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and successfully solicit approximately $250 million in political contributions. “These false claims fueled the violence of his supporters on January 6.”
The full report, based on 1,000-plus interviews, collected documents including emails, texts, phone records and a year and a half of investigation by the nine-member bipartisan committee, will be released on Wednesday, along with transcripts and other materials that is collected. in the investigation.
Here is the summary of the report:
The House committee outlines several criminal statutes it believes were violated in the plots to stop Trump’s defeat and says there is evidence of criminal referrals to the Department of Justice for Trump, Trump attorney John Eastman and ” other people.”
The summary of the report says there is evidence to prosecute Trump for multiple crimes, including obstruction of official proceedings, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make false statements, aiding or abetting rebellion, conspiracy to injure or obstruct an officer and conspiracy.
The committee says it also has the evidence to refer Eastman on the obstruction charge, and names him as a co-conspirator in other alleged criminal activities on which lawmakers have gathered evidence.
In addition, many others have been named as participants in the conspiracies the committee is linking to Trump, including then-DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark and Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, as well as lawyers involved by Trump Kenneth Chesebro and Rudy Giuliani.
The committee referred to evidence about criminal obstruction of the House investigation but the summary does not detail that evidence.
Many of the committee’s appointees — including Trump, Eastman and Giuliani — had their own responses Monday.
The committee outlines 17 findings of its investigation that underpin its reasoning for criminal referrals, including that Trump knew the fraud allegations he was pushing were false and continued he continued to add to them anyway.
“President Trump’s decision to falsely declare victory on election night and, illegally, to stop the counting of votes was not a spontaneous decision. It was premeditated,” the summary says.
The committee revealed emails from Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, from before the 2020 presidential election that say Trump should declare victory regardless of the outcome.
He also notes that Trump’s key allies, including those who testified before the committee, have admitted that they have found no proof to support the former president’s claims.
“Ultimately, even Rudolph Giuliani and his legal team admitted that they had no conclusive evidence of election fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the election,” the summary says, referring to Trump’s personal attorney at the time.
“For example, although Giuliani has repeatedly claimed publicly that Dominion’s voting machines stole the election, he admitted during his Select Committee testimony that ‘I don’t think the machines stole the election,'” he says.
Sources familiar with Trump’s legal strategy in the Justice Department’s pursuit told CNN that his lawyers believe prosecutors face an uphill battle in proving he did not believe the election was stolen despite being told as much by senior members of his own administration. that’s it.
In making its case to prosecute Trump from the Justice Department, the House committee focused on that potential defense.
In detailing why the committee believes Trump’s conduct is consistent with all criminal statutes, the summary highlights evidence that Trump was warned that his schemes were illegal.
The committee says it gathered evidence that showed Trump “raised approximately one-quarter of a billion dollars in fundraising efforts between the election and January 6th. Those solicitations continually claimed and referred to electoral fraud that did not exist.”
“For example, the Trump Campaign, along with the Republican National Committee, sent millions of emails to its supporters, with messages claiming that the election was ‘rigged,’ that their donations could stop the Democrats’ attempt to steal the election,’ and that Vice President Biden would be an ‘illegitimate president’ if he took office,’” the summary says.
The select committee is referring several Republican lawmakers who have refused to cooperate with the investigation to the House Ethics Committee.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, as well as Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona, could face possible sanctions for refusing to comply with the committee’s signatures.
The committee raised concerns that attorneys paid by Trump’s political committee or related groups were motivated to defend the former president, saying, “lawyers who receive such payments have specific incentives to defend President Trump rather than zealously representing their own clients. Certain information related to this matter has been provided to the Department of Justice and the Fulton County District Attorney.”
In one case, a witness whose lawyer was being paid by a Trump-allied group was told that she “could, under certain circumstances, tell the Committee that she did not recall facts when she actually recalled them.” When the witness raised concerns with his lawyer about that approach, the lawyer said, “They don’t know what you know, [witness]. They don’t know that you can recall some of these things. So saying ‘I don’t remember’ is a perfectly acceptable response,” according to the report’s summary.
When it came to a specific issue that reflected negatively on Trump, the lawyer told his client, “No, no, no. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that.”
The committee notes that Trump and his allies attempted to contact witnesses prior to their committee testimony.
“The Select Committee is aware that President Trump has made numerous attempts to contact Select Committee witnesses. The Department of Justice is aware of at least one of these circumstances,” according to the summary.
In its final report, the committee also highlighted two high-profile witnesses – Ivanka Trump and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany – who were less cooperative than others. They and others showed “a complete lack of memory on certain issues, or were not as honest or direct as Cipollone.”
In another instance, Trump had an angry conversation with Pence in which he referred to the then-vice president as “The P word,” according to a committee interview with Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff, Julie Radford.
In Radford’s recollection, the name-calling was upsetting at the time, but when the committee asked Ivanka if there were any “particular words” her father used in the conversation with Pence, “she simply answered : ‘No.’”
The summary states: “In several cases, the Committee found that more senior White House aides had a far better recollection of events than senior staff members purported to have.”
As for McEnany, the committee called her testimony “incoherent, as if she was testifying from pre-prepared talking points,” noting that she had been dismissed early in the investigation and was not as soon with others from Trump’s press office.
The report points the finger at two Trump appointees at the Justice Department who the committee believes abused their positions and acted unethically.
Clark, the former acting assistant attorney general of the Civil Division, is already well known for trying to arm the Justice Department to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. The committee raises the prospect that Clark broke the law. The Department of Justice is already investigating Clark and federal agents have searched his home.
One of the biggest things Clark did was draft a letter to the Department of Justice to send to election officials in battleground states, basically urging them to overturn their results. The letter, drafted with the help of fellow Trump appointee Ken Klukowski, falsely stated that the department believed there were problems with the results.
“This was a deliberate choice by Jeff Clark to contradict the Department’s specific findings on election fraud, and to deliberately involve the Department in the Presidential election on behalf of President Trump and risk creating or would become a constitutional crisis,” says the summary.
In a new development, the panel expressed its concern about Klukowski’s behavior.
He worked for the Trump campaign before joining the Justice Department during the final weeks of the administration. While at the civil division of the department, he spent some of his time assisting Clark in his efforts to overturn the election, “despite the fact that election-related matters are not part of the Civil portfolio,” the summary says.
The summary section outlining the referrals makes a case for why the Justice Department’s prosecutions should go beyond the rioters who physically overran the Capitol.
The committee says Trump “believed then, and continues to believe now, that he is above the law, unbound by our Constitution and its express checks on presidential authority.”
“If President Trump and the parties who aided him in attempting to overturn the legitimate outcome of the 2020 election are not ultimately held accountable under the law, their behavior could set a precedent and invite danger for future elections, ” says the summary. “Failure to hold them accountable now could lead to illegal future attempts to overturn our elections, putting the security and viability of our Republic at risk.”
The summary revisits Trump’s infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where he urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory in the state. The summary also shows that Trump doxed the leader of the Michigan Senate by tweeting out his cell phone number after he publicly said he would not undermine the election results.
Lawmakers also highlighted the plight of former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who previously testified about the abuse they suffered at the hands of Giuliani and others in pro circles. -Trump falsely accuses them of rigging the results in Atlanta.
Like Freeman and Moss, other officials who have confronted Trump’s rhetoric have received death and rape threats as well as abusive phone calls and emails, and some have feared for their safety.
Evidence that Trump allies sought pardons as the administration neared its end shows they knew there were legal problems with their conduct, according to the committee.
The summary of previous public accounts focuses on pardon requests from members of Congress, providing new details about Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz’s alleged pardon attempt, which was discussed in public committee testimony by a former White House aide. Cassidy Hutchinson.
CNN previously reported that McEntee’s testimony linked Gaetz’s pardon application to a separate DOJ investigator; However, Hutchinson said Gaetz and others asked for “blanket” pardons from participants in a meeting discussing election-related schemes.
The summary of the report outlines how the intelligence community and law enforcement agencies were receiving information that January 6 was likely to be violent and sharing that information with the White House and the US Secret Service.
For example, on January 3, 2021, Justice Department officials received a briefing on plans to “occupy the Capitol” and “invade” the Capitol on January 6. , then-Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist predicted on a call from the National Security Council that the Capitol could be the target of violence.
“I’ll never forget it,” Milley said in testimony released by the committee.
In pictures: The January 6 hearings
The panel suggests that former White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato failed to adequately serve as an intermediary between the intelligence community and the White House regarding security updates prior to January 6. On the same subject : A White House climate official sanctioned by a key scientific institution.
“Ornato had access to information that suggested violence at the Capitol on January 6th, and it was his job to communicate that to Meadows and Trump. Although Ornato told us he did not remember doing so, the Select Committee found many parts of Ornato’s testimony questionable,” the panel wrote.
Trump’s head of security detail, Bobby Engel, testified to the committee that he shared critical information with Ornato as a way to convey messages to the White House.
Ornato confirmed Engel’s understanding of intelligence sharing, but when pressed on whether he spoke to Meadows about concerns about the threat landscape going into Jan. 6 he said, “I don’t remember; however, in my job, I want to make sure that he was tracking the demos, that he received a daily briefing, the Presidential briefing. So it’s more likely that all of this was being found in his daily care as well.”
Staff members close to Trump told the committee that they tried to encourage the then-president to act proactively to ease concerns about January 6.
Hope Hicks, Trump’s former communications director, texted spokesman Hogan Gidley as the violence unfolded on January 6 that she suggested “several times” on January 4 and 5 that Trump should say publicly that January 6 would remain peaceful. Hicks also testified that Herschmann advised Trump to make a preemptive public statement before January 6 calling for no violence that day. No such statement has ever been made.
By the time of Trump’s Jan. 6 rally, the committee says evidence it received shows that the former president had received a security briefing and that the Secret Service had indicated that prohibited items were being confiscated from individuals who wanted to be in present.
The committee highlights Trump’s frustration at not being brought to the Capitol on January 6 as evidence that he intended to participate in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“The main concern of the Committee was that the President intended to personally participate in the efforts of the Capitol on January 6, which led to the attempt to cancel the election from within the House of the House, from a step outside the Capitol, or otherwise,” the summary. of the report which reads. “There is no question from all the evidence that has been put together that President Trump had that intention.”
The report states that the panel was unable to get Ornato to confirm a bombshell moment during the public hearings, in which Hutchinson recalled Ornato describing Trump’s altercation with the head of his security detail when he was told he would not be brought to the Capitol. The committee’s summary said Hutchinson and a White House employee testified to the committee about Ornato’s conversation. But “Ornato claimed that he did not remember either communication, and that he had no knowledge of the President’s anger.”
Ultimately, the committee writes that it has “significant concerns about the credibility of this testimony” and promises to publicly release its transcript. Ornato did not recall giving the information to Hutchinson or a White House staffer with national security responsibilities, according to the report.
“The Committee has doubts about Ornato’s account.”
The panel writes that it has received testimony from “several sources about ‘unusual interaction’ in the SUV.” The panel cites multiple members of the Secret Service, a member of the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police and national security officials in the White House who described Trump’s behavior as “irate,” “angry,” “persistent,” “profane” and “heated.” “
The driver of Trump’s motorcade on January 6 testified to the committee:
Trump’s former press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said Trump continued to push to travel to the Capitol even after returning to the White House.
“So, as far as I can remember, I remember him being – trying to say that he wanted to physically walk and be part of the march and then saying that he would ride the Beast if he had to him, riding in the President’s limo,” McEnany said.
Another objective that the summary of the committee’s report seeks to prove is that Trump called on his supporters to go to the Capitol during his pre-planned rally speech.
For example, the committee notes that Jan. 6 rally organizer Kylie Kremer texted MyPIllow CEO Mike Lindell, “This is just between us. … He can’t go out on the march either because I’ll be in trouble with the national park service and all the agencies but POTUS will just call him ‘out of the blue’.”
The committee outlines Trump’s failure to act as the riot unfolded, noting that, while watching the riot on television, he made no calls for security assistance and resisted efforts by staff at ask him to call off his supporters.
“President Trump did not contact a single national security official during the day. Not by the Pentagon, nor by the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Capitol Police Department, or the DC Mayor’s office,” the committee writes. “As Vice President Pence confirmed, President Trump even tried to reach his own Vice President to make sure Pence was safe.”
Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee that he had this response to Trump, “You know, you’re the Commander. You are attacking the Capitol of the United States of America. And there is nothing? No call? Nothing? zero?”
Trump, however, took the time to contact his attorney.
White House staff, meanwhile, described as horrified as the Capitol was under attack, as Trump fired off a tweet criticizing Pence.
Hicks texted a colleague that night saying, “Are you attacking the Vice President? Wtf is wrong with it,” according to the committee’s summary report.
“No photos of the President for the rest of the evening until after 4 p.m. President Trump apparently instructed the White House photographer not to take any photos,” the committee wrote, citing testimony from former White House photographer Shealah Craighead.
Afterward, on the evening of Jan. 6, Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, told Katrina Pierson, one of the rally’s organizers, that he felt guilty helping Trump win, the report says.
The day’s events, Parscale said, resulted from “a sitting president wanting a civil war.”
The committee also highlights real-time actions by Republican members of Congress who either downplayed the Capitol attack or defended Trump.
Trump’s son-in-law and former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner described House GOP leader McCarthy as “scared” when McCarthy reached out to members of the Trump family for help during the riot.
In a text to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote, “Mark told me there is an active shooter on the first floor of the Capitol Tell the President to please put people on his peace. t the way to solve anything,” according to the synopsis.
The committee reveals a conversation Trump had with a White House employee when he returned to the White House after his January 6 speech. Trump’s actions and conversations from the time he returned to the White House to the time he called the rioters, known as the famous name. 187 minutes, there are still large information gaps.
He asked the White House staffer – whose identity the panel kept anonymous “to protect against the risk of retaliation” – if they had seen his rally speech on TV. A White House employee responded, “Sir, they cut it off because they’re rioting at the Capitol.”
When Trump asked what they meant, the employee repeated:
The summary identifies the roadblocks the House committee ran into in its investigation and says the Justice Department has the tools — like the grand jury subpoena power — to hit those obstacles.
The summary also notes the privilege claims made by former Trump White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, which prevented the committee from learning details of direct conversations with Trump. But the panels seem hopeful that a recent sealing court victory won by the DOJ will allow prosecutors to get that evidence from Cipollone.
“Based on the information it has received, the Committee believes that Cipollone and others can provide direct evidence to establish that President Trump has repeatedly, for multiple hours, refused to make a public statement ordering his violent supporters and without leaving the law of the Capitol,” the summary. say.
More than 30 witnesses before the select committee invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refused, on that basis, to provide evidence. They included individuals central to the investigation, such as Eastman, Clark, Chesebro, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and others.
