‘ONE MAN’ LIT THE FUSE
Devastating final Jan. 6 panel report: Riot was all Trump
Former President Donald Trump “lit the fire” on Jan. 6, 2021 and is the “one man” who bears unique responsibility for the unprecedented effort to overturn an American election and block the peaceful transfer of power, the congressional committee on the attack charged.
A sweeping 814-page final report of the panel placed the blame squarely on Trump for the violent attack on the Capitol and called for him to be banned from holding public office.
“No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again,” wrote Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the committee’s vice chair. “He is unfit for any office.”
Drawing a grim portrait of a violent attack on democracy fueled by hatred and lies, it referred Trump and others for possible criminal prosecution for the sprawling scheme to keep him in office after he lost the 2020 election to President Biden.
It caps the panel’s extraordinary 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection effort, complete with high drama and televised hearings that gripped the nation.
“Our country has come too far to allow a defeated President to turn himself into a successful tyrant,” wrote Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee’s chairman.
Trump derided the report as a partisan disgrace and noted that he urged the protesters to leave peacefully, even though that call came after hours of bloody violence and when the insurrection had effectively failed.
“The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to ... study the reason for the protest, Election Fraud. WITCH HUNT!” Trump wrote, without providing any evidence to back his claims.
The report details that Trump hatched a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the results of the election and incited his supporters, including armed right-wing radicals and white supremacists, to “fight like hell” to block Congress from certifying Biden’s win.
He tried to force Secret Service agents to take him to the Capitol to lead the protest, then refused to lift a finger to protect lawmakers even as allies and relatives pleaded with him to call off the rioters.
Trump even issued a tweet attacking Vice
President Mike Pence as attackers chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” hunted him down inside the Capitol.
The seven Democrats and two Republican critics of Trump on the committee say Congress should block Trump from holding future office, a move that would scuttle his already announced 2024 presidential comeback campaign.
The report’s eight chapters describe in gripping detail the many facets of the remarkable plan that Trump and his acolytes devised to cling to power even after losing the election to Biden in a vote that was not even particularly close.
The former president launched an intense pressure campaign on states, federal officials, lawmakers and Pence to game the constitutional system or overturn it by force.
The damning report comes as Trump
faces multiple criminal investigations, including probes of his role in the insurrection and improperly taking hundreds of top secret documents to his Florida estate when he left office.
Trump has recently been blamed by some Republicans for an underwhelming performance in the midterm elections, leaving him politically wounded. Still, he has been counted out before and remains the most politically dominant figure in the GOP.
The panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained more than 1 million pages of documents.
The witnesses ranged from some of Trump’s closest aides to shellshocked cops who defended the Capitol and a handful of the extremist rioters themselves.
They also included top Republican officials who pushed back against Trump’s wide-ranging efforts to overturn his defeat, including state election officials, White House lawyers and Department of Justice officials.
The report details a string of shocking failings by law enforcement and intelligence agencies to prepare and respond to the attack in real time.
But the report debunks Trump’s false claim that he made any effort to protect the Capitol. It emphatically asserts that he and his extremist supporters are responsible for the violence, not law enforcement.
“The President of the United States inciting a mob to march on the Capitol and impede the work of Congress,” Thompson said, “is not a scenario our intelligence and law enforcement communities envisioned for this country.”