The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol has recommended in its final report that Donald Trump should be barred from holding office again.
An image of Trump is seen above the members of the January 6 committee during their final meeting on 19 December.
The former US president is again running for the White House and is seen as the leading contender for the Republican party’s 2024 nomination. However, his campaign has been a damp squib so far and his political fortunes battered by the poor performance of Trump-backed candidates in the November midterms and the emergence of rival figures within the party, notably Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
Across 814 pages of the report, published late Thursday night, the Democrat-led committee laid out findings that placed blame squarely on “one man” for the violent events that engulfed the legislative seat of the US government for several hours in 2020.
“The central cause of Jan 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed,” said the report, released overnight, in a punchy two-sentence summary. “None of the events of Jan 6 would have happened without him.”
In extensive detail, the committee accused the former president of “a multipart plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election”. Trump’s conduct on that day, it says, warrants implementation of a constitutional ban on the New York real estate developer from holding elected office again.
Prior to Jan 6, it continued, Trump and his inner circle engaged in “at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure, or condemnation”, between Election Day and January 6.
On Monday, the committee voted to refer Trump to the Department of Justice on at least four criminal charges, including insurrection and obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress.
The committee also placed blame on domestic law enforcement agencies.
“Federal and local law enforcement authorities were in possession of multiple streams of intelligence predicting violence directed at the Capitol prior to January 6th,” the report says. “Although some of that intelligence was fragmentary, it should have been sufficient to warrant far more vigorous preparations for the security of the joint session.”
Among the evidence presented in the panel’s final report was that there had been 68 meetings, attempted or connected phone calls, or text messages aimed at pressuring state or local officials toward the goal of overturning the election’s results.
“President Trump’s decision to declare victory falsely on election night and, unlawfully, to call for the vote counting to stop, was not a spontaneous decision. It was premeditated,” the report states.
The committee also described how Trump, his campaign and Republican National Committee used claims that the election was stolen to collect more than $250m in political fundraising.
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