The work of the House select committee investigating the insurrection that occurred on January 6 and former President Donald Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to overturn his loss in the 2020 election is expected to come to a close this week with the publication of an extensive report of its findings as well as a series of criminal referrals, one of which could be against Trump himself. On Monday, the committee in the House of Representatives is scheduled to get together to vote on criminal referrals and maybe present additional evidence.
Additionally, it intends to publish its conclusions in the form of a report and to make public the transcripts of the numerous interviews that were carried out with advisers to Trump, allies of Trump, members of Trump’s family, and other individuals. In the last few weeks, before the Republicans gain control of the House and end the historical investigation, the members are finishing up work that has been ongoing for the past 18 months.
“We looked at the timeline, and it seems that we will be able to finish our task a little bit ahead of schedule. Then why not make it available to the general public as quickly as possible? Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi and chair of the committee, stated last week. According to a report published on Friday by Politico, the committee will vote on whether or not to encourage the Justice Department to pursue at least three criminal charges against Trump.
The panel weaved a compelling narrative throughout the past summer through a tightly produced series of hearings that demonstrated that Trump had been informed on multiple occasions by his aides and family members that he had lost his reelection bid and needed to accept reality. This showed that the panel did an excellent job producing the hearings.
The testimony and evidence presented at the hearing also showed that President Trump, with the assistance of top lieutenants Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, exerted pressure on state officials to send fake electors to Washington, browbeat former Vice President Mike Pence — even inciting rioters to call for his hanging with a terse tweet — and remained walled away in the White House, glued to the television as thousands of his supporters and right-wing militia members ransacked the Capitol.
Even amid the massive investigations being conducted by Congress and the federal government, new information concerning the assault continues to surface. Yahoo News published an article the week before last about the substantial efforts made by a Department of Homeland Security analyst to warn federal intelligence about a highly organized plan to attack the Capitol.
This plan had been festering online weeks before the attack on January 6. The analyst’s pleadings were met with resistance within DHS. For the most part, they were ignored, which may have contributed to the security lapses that allowed rioters to overpower Capitol police.
A federal judge recently found Stewart Rhodes, the head of the Oath Keepers militia group, and one of his colleagues guilty of seditious conspiracy and other charges. Other federal prosecutions against the rioters and members of the militia continue to make their way through the courts.
And just recently, the Department of Justice chose to appoint a special counsel named Jack Smith to supervise the ongoing investigations into the attack and Trump’s possible responsibility for repeatedly pressing people from the White House to throw out the election results.
But even though the lawmakers’ ability to subpoena witnesses was severely limited — efforts to force five of Trump’s top deputies to testify resulted in only one conviction, against former adviser Steve Bannon; and subpoenas of leading House Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, went unanswered — the lawmakers were still able to unearth shocking information regarding Trump’s efforts.
The lawmakers obtained thousands of text messages from Trump’s then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that showed his supporters urging him to suspend the Constitution to prevent the transfer of power to Joe Biden, as well as Trump’s own family and allies pleading with him on January 6 to call off the rioters. The text messages were obtained from Mark Meadows, serving as Trump’s chief of staff at the time.
The panel also featured a stunning testimony from Meadows’s former aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who detailed Trump’s efforts to join the rioters at the Capitol and his insistence that the security magnetometers at the White House be taken down so that supporters wearing military-style armor and guns could join the crowd. Hutchinson’s testimony was presented during the hearing. According to Hutchinson’s testimony, Trump’s response to the armed demonstrators was, “They’re not here to hurt me.”
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