By Glynn Wilson –
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol held its final public meeting on Monday afternoon, Dec. 19, 2022, ending a historic 18-month investigation with the approval of its final report.
The committee voted unanimously to recommend criminal charges of inciting an insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress to the U.S. Department of Justice against former President Donald J. Trump and his top allies, sending a powerful symbolic message to the country with the sincere purpose to prevent any threat to American democracy like this from ever happening again.
“That evidence has led to an overriding and straightforward conclusion: the central cause of Jan. 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” the report states. “None of the events of Jan. 6th would have happened without him.”
The criminal referrals were a major escalation for a congressional investigation that is the most significant in at last a generation. The panel referred five other Trump allies for potential prosecution for actions the committee said warranted Justice Department investigation, including Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, and the lawyers Rudi Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro. The charges would carry lengthy prison sentences if federal prosecutors choose to pursue them and obtain convictions in court.
The panel also referred four Republican members of Congress to the House Ethics Committee, including the man seeking to become the next speaker, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, because of their refusal to comply with the panel’s subpoenas. The other Republicans referred were Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona.
“Even key individuals who worked closely with President Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6th ultimately admitted that they lacked actual evidence sufficient to change the election result, and they admitted that what they were attempting was unlawful,” the committee wrote.
The panel asked the Justice Department to investigate whether anyone had interfered with or obstructed the panel’s investigation, including whether any lawyers paid for by groups connected to Trump “may have advised clients to provide false or misleading testimony to the committee.”
The committee also chastised certain witnesses that it said had not been forthright with investigators. It said it had “significant concerns about the credibility” of the testimony of Anthony M. Ornato, the former Secret Service agent and White House aide at the heart of a dispute over conflicting accounts of Trump’s actions on Jan. 6. The committee also said that Kayleigh McEnany, one of Trump’s former press secretaries, and Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter, had been less than forthcoming.
The compelling hearings held this summer demonstrated how Trump spread lies about the 2020 election, was involved in a scheme to put forward a slate of false electors, and then pressured state officials, the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence to go along with his seditious conspiracy to short circuit the peaceful transfer of power culminating in his incitement of a violent insurrection that almost worked on Jan. 6.
Justice Department prosecutors are already at work on their own federal investigation, now under the leadership of Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has issued subpoenas to officials in seven states in which the Trump campaign organized electors to falsely certify the election for Trump — in spite of the overwhelming results showing that Democrat Joe Biden won the presidential election of 2020 by 51.3 percent to 46.8 percent of the popular vote, 81,283,501 votes to 74,223,975, resulting in 306 electoral votes for Biden, and only 232 for Trump, the loser.
Clearly one of the most consequential and ground breaking congressional investigations in American history, the committee spent more than a year and a half looking into the seditious events and violent insurrection that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021. It issued more than 100 subpoenas, interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, obtained and reviewed more than one million documents, and held nine public hearings that consistently drew millions of viewers, breaking new ground by using videos to present evidence in a way that moved the body into the 21st century.
The result was one of the most profound and conclusive reports in the history of Congress: A former president was guilty of being the first to refuse to go along with the peaceful transfer of power since George Washington resigned his commission as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army on December 23, 1783.
“Every president in our history has defended this orderly transfer of authority, except one,” Representative Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican and vice chairwoman of the committee, said at the start of the hearing on Monday.
General George Washington Resigning His Commission: depicts George Washington’s resignation as commander-in-chief of the Army to the Congress, which was then meeting at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, on December 23, 1783. This action was of great significance in establishing civilian, rather than military rule, leading to a republic, rather than a dictatorship. Washington stands with two aides-de-camp addressing the president of the Congress, Thomas Mifflin, and others, such as Elbridge Gerry, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and James Madison. Mrs. Washington and her three grandchildren are shown watching from the gallery, although they were not in fact present at the event. John Trumbull (1756–1843) was born in Connecticut, the son of the governor. After graduating from Harvard University, he served in the Continental Army under General Washington. He studied painting with Benjamin West in London and focused on history painting. This oil painting on canvas is now located in the United States Capitol rotunda in Washington D.C.
Charges Recommended
Taking all of the facts in the report into account, and based on the breadth of the evidence it accumulated, the Committee made the following criminal referrals to the Department of Justice Special Counsel.
I. Obstruction of an Official Proceeding (18 U.S.C. § 1512(c))
II. Conspiracy to Defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. § 371)
III. Conspiracy to Make a False Statement (18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1001)
IV. “Incite,” “Assist” or “Aid and Comfort” an Insurrection (18 U.S.C. § 2383)
Advance Intelligence
There are some confusing and troubling statements high in the report about the advance intelligence gathering that seem to contradict what has been said and reported before.
Related
Trump Ordered Washington Security to ‘Stand Down’ on Jan. 6, according to Sworn Testimony
“The intelligence community and law enforcement agencies did successfully detect the planning for potential violence on January 6th, including planning specifically by the Proud Boys and Oath Keeper militia groups who ultimately led the attack on the Capitol,” the report states.
This is in contradiction to some of the early testimony in Congressional hearings before the Jan. 6 select committee was formed, when the Sergeants at Arms for the House and Senate and the acting Secretary of Defense were questioned and denied there was advance intelligence predicting the violent insurrection and said law enforcement expected another clash between Black Lives Matter and Antifa activists with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers in the streets on Jan. 6.
“As January 6th approached, the intelligence specifically identified the potential for violence at the U.S. Capitol. This intelligence was shared within the executive branch, including with the Secret Service and the President’s National Security Council,” the report states.
“Intelligence gathered in advance of January 6th did not support a conclusion that Antifa or other left-wing groups would likely engage in a violent counter-demonstration, or attack Trump supporters on January 6th. Indeed, intelligence from January 5th indicated that some left-wing groups were instructing their members to ‘stay at home’ and not attend on January 6th,” the report states.
This is new and to the best of my knowledge has never been reported before.
“Ultimately, none of these groups was involved to any material extent with the attack on the Capitol on January 6th,” the committee says, which is true.
According to our original reporting, members of the Antifa group and their friends in Black Lives Matter had advance knowledge that they were going to be blamed for violence on Jan. 6 — which in fact happened — so they instructed their members to “stand down” on that day and not attend the “Stop the Steal” rally or engage with protesters in their march up to the Capitol.
In fact, I talked to members of Antifa that week and they were more than 1,000 miles away in a campground in Florida.
Although certain members of the Capitol Police leadership regarded their approach to January 6th as “all hands on deck,” the committee reports, “the Capitol Police leadership did not have sufficient assets in place to address the violent and lawless crowd,” which seems to suggest that either they didn’t have advance knowledge or purposely ignored it — perhaps on secret orders from Trump.
“Capitol Police leadership did not anticipate the scale of the violence that would ensue after President Trump instructed tens of thousands of his supporters in the Ellipse crowd to march to the Capitol,” the committee says …. “Although Chief Steven Sund raised the idea of National Guard support, the Capitol Police Board did not request Guard assistance prior to January 6th.”
The Metropolitan Police took an even more proactive approach to January 6th, and deployed roughly 800 officers, the report indicates, and responded to the emergency calls for help at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“In addition, the Department of Justice readied a group of Federal agents at Quantico and in the District of Columbia, anticipating that January 6th could become violent, and then deployed those agents once it became clear that police at the Capitol were overwhelmed. Agents from the Department of Homeland Security were also deployed to assist,” the reports says.
“President Trump had authority and responsibility to direct deployment of the National Guard in the District of Columbia, but never gave any order to deploy the National Guard on January 6th or on any other day. Nor did he instruct any Federal law enforcement agency to assist. Because the authority to deploy the National Guard had been delegated to the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense could, and ultimately did deploy the Guard,” the report continues, although hours too late to prevent the rioters from breaching the building.
“Although evidence identifies a likely miscommunication between members of the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense impacting the timing of deployment, the Committee has found no evidence that the Department of Defense intentionally delayed deployment of the National Guard,” the report states.
“The Select Committee recognizes that some at the Department had genuine concerns, counseling caution, that President Trump might give an illegal order to use the military in support of his efforts to overturn the election.”
This is the first mention of this I’ve seen in all the hearings and all the coverage to date.
Police, Military Involvement
There’s no mention in the report about members of the military and police officers participating in the insurrection on Trump’s behalf. This appears to be a weakness of the report and even a bit of a “white wash” since Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney was adamant that the Capitol Police who protected the Capitol should be viewed and treated as heroes, in spite of previous reporting showing that some did in fact help the rioters break through barriers and enter the building.
Final Report of the Select Committee
Reaction
Congressman Adam Schiff of California, a member of the committee, sent out an email blast to supporters not long after the final hearing was concluded and the report was made public.
“No sooner did we finish our final presentation on how the actions of Donald Trump led to the first attack on our Capitol in over a century, when the personal attacks began,” he said. “Kevin McCarthy is going to disband any efforts at true oversight once Republicans assume the House majority in the new Congress next month. And the effort to discredit anyone involved in the oversight we have done is already starting.”
“The far-right is only going to amplify their attacks on me in the coming hours to push back on the facts we have laid out over the last two years,” he added.
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