House Jan. 6 Committee Releases Final Report Detailing Trump’s Coup Attempt
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WASHINGTON — The House Jan. 6 select committee on Thursday released its long-awaited final report detailing former President Donald Trump’s attempted coup to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election — and recommendations to prevent such a thing from happening again.
The material backs up the conclusions outlined in the report’s executive summary on Monday following the panel’s final meeting.
“From the beginning, Donald Trump’s fraud allegations were concocted nonsense, designed to prey upon the patriotism of millions of men and women who love our country,” committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, wrote in her foreword. “Most Americans also did not know exactly how Donald Trump, along with a handful of others, planned to defeat the transfer of presidential power on January 6th. This was not a simple plan, but it was a corrupt one.”
The 845-page report, released late Thursday night, includes 11 recommendations to prevent a president from repeating Trump’s efforts to set aside an election, including two recommendations that have already been accomplished.
The first is to clarify that Congress’s role is to ratify, but not alter, the results of a presidential election. A law doing exactly that was inserted into the government spending bill that passed the Senate on Thursday and will likely clear the House on Friday.
The bipartisan House select committee cites the need for “accountability” and notes that is has already made criminal referrals to the Department of Justice while urging the DOJ to prohibit its lawyers from taking part in campaign-related activities or activities “aimed at subverting the rule of law and overturning a lawful election.” Former Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark was specifically cited in the criminal referrals as someone who likely violated the law in his attempt to help Trump’s coup attempt.
The other recommendations include doing a better job at countering “violent extremism,” enforcing the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists serving in office, and designating the Jan. 6 counting of electoral ballots after a presidential election as a “national special security event,” similar to an inauguration or the State of the Union address.
The bulk of the report provides details behind the findings already released, largely in a series of public presentations this summer. These included both live, sworn testimony by witnesses in the Cannon Caucus Room as well as dozens of snippets of videotaped depositions.
Almost all of it was from Republicans, including those who worked directly for Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence in those weeks between Trump’s election loss to Democrat Joe Biden and his attempt to award himself a second term nevertheless on the date of Congress’ ceremonial counting of the electoral votes.
The 161-page summary laid out the justification for the criminal charges against Trump and others that the committee voted to refer to the Department of Justice and some additional details regarding the witness tampering allegations the committee alluded to previously.
From the beginning, Donald Trump’s fraud allegations were concocted nonsense, designed to prey upon the patriotism of millions of men and women who love our country.Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) in the report's foreword
The summary also contained a previously unstated finding that Pentagon officials were reluctant to deploy the military on Jan. 6, 2021, because they feared Trump would issue an “illegal order” in an attempt to use troops in his coup attempt.
The eight-chapter final report, committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin said, will have two basic elements.
“The report is half about the past and what we’ve just studied, and what needs to be done to protect ourselves against similar cycles of coup, insurrection, electoral sabotage and political violence,” the Maryland Democrat said, previewing the final document. “These are the forces that have now been unleashed.”
The committee was facing an end-of-year deadline to finish its work. Four of the nine members are not returning to Congress. Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger and Florida Democrat Stephanie Murphy chose not to seek reelection. Vice-chair Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, was defeated by a Trump-backed challenger in her primary. And Virginia Democrat Elaine Luria was ousted by a Republican in the November midterms.
Additionally, Republicans are set to take control of the chamber on Jan. 3, and the panel will almost certainly not be allowed to continue.
The committee was created in late spring 2021 after Trump’s supporters in Congress, including House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, killed an attempt to create a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate Jan. 6.
Nancy Pelosi, the chamber’s Democratic speaker, then pushed through a resolution creating a House “select” committee to investigate Jan. 6. She then vetoed some of McCarthy’s picks for the panel who had worked with Trump to overturn Biden’s victory and McCarthy responded by boycotting the committee altogether. Pelosi then appointed Kinzinger and Cheney, allowing it to remain bipartisan.
Many Republicans, including McCarthy, have nevertheless called the committee illegitimate, and McCarthy told committee chairman Bennie Thompson to preserve all its documents and interviews so that Republicans in the new Congress could investigate the investigation.
Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said he had no problem with that since the committee intended to release all its material, with perhaps only the names of certain witnesses redacted.
“Not just preserved but made available to the public,” Thompson said. “So, you know, the subpoena I signed for him to come and testify before the committee will be part of the record.”
Trump supporters occupy the West Front of the U.S. Capitol and the inauguration stands on Jan. 6, 2021.
McCarthy, who was in contact with Trump on Jan. 6, like other GOP lawmakers, refused to honor committee subpoenas.
The Department of Justice is investigating Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, including the scheme to submit to the National Archives fraudulent slates of electors from states that voted for Democrat Joe Biden as a way to pressure Pence into awarding Trump a second term. A separate probe is investigating Trump’s removal of highly classified documents from the White House and subsequent refusal to hand them over, even in defiance of a subpoena.
In addition to the federal criminal investigations, a Georgia prosecutor is looking at Trump’s and his allies’ attempts to coerce state officials into falsely declaring him the winner in that state.
Trump, despite losing the election by 7 million votes nationally and 306-232 in the Electoral College, became the first president in more than two centuries of elections to refuse to hand over power peacefully. His incitement of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol ― his last-ditch attempt to remain in office ― led to the deaths of five people, including one police officer, the injury of 140 officers and four police suicides.
At rallies and in statements on his personal social media platform, Trump has continued to lie about the election and the Jan. 6 House select committee’s work, calling it a “hoax” similar to previous investigations into his 2016 campaign’s acceptance of Russian assistance and his attempted extortion of Ukraine into helping his 2020 campaign.
HuffPost reporter Arthur Delaney contributed to this report.
