Americans split on whether Trump should be charged
Half of Americans believe Donald Trump should be charged over the Capitol riot and almost half do not, highlighting the dilemma over whether to prosecute the former president.
Only a quarter of voters believe Trump will end up in court.
Members of the committee investigating the rampage by Trump supporters on January 6 last year said on Friday local time that they had presented sufficient evidence to warrant criminal charges. That decision is up to the Department of Justice under Attorney-General Merrick Garland.
At their final hearing before the summer recess, witnesses said Trump spent three hours in a White House dining room watching the attack on TV and refusing entreaties by senior staff, advisers, friends and his children to call off the mob.
Trump was accused of setting his supporters on the Capitol after Mike Pence, his vicepresident, refused to follow Trump’s unconstitutional demands to reject election results from swing states won by Joe Biden. Secret Service agents guarding Pence were so shaken by the fury of Trump supporters that they called loved ones to say goodbye in case they were killed.
“I think we have proven, not basically just in this hearing, we’ve proven different components of a criminal case against Donald Trump or people around him in every hearing,” Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican members of the committee, said.
“This represents the greatest effort to overturn the will of the people, to conspire against the will of the people and to conspire against American democracy we’ve ever had, frankly, since the Civil War. “It’s up to [the Department of] Justice now to make a decision. If we become a country that accepts attempts at coups, and attempts at overcoming the will of the American people, we can’t survive that.”