WASHINGTON – The first week of the 117th Congress began with an attack on Capitol Hill that rocked the nation and tested American democracy. Nearly two years later, this Congress is drawing to a close with the publication of the most comprehensive account yet of the deadly insurrection and what led to it.
On Monday, the House commission investigating the January 1 case. Capitol Hill Riot 6 will vote to adopt its large and highly anticipated report, present important findings and recommend criminal referrals to the Justice Department, which is expected to include former President Donald Trump.
The full report is expected to be publicly available on Wednesday. Following closely the commission’s televised public hearings this summer, the eight-part report is expected to place much of the blame for the attack on Trump, who investigators say sought to subvert the 2020 presidential election in a bid to stay in power.
Witnesses, most of them Republicans, testified on Jan. 1. 6 panels that Trump and his inner circle had worked furiously to question Joe Biden’s legitimate election victory; he launched a multi-pronged campaign to lobby state officials, senior Justice Department officials and Vice President Mike Pence to help void the election;
ordered a crowd of thousands of his supporters to march on the Capitol to prevent lawmakers from certifying election results; and refused to suspend his supporters when they viciously assaulted police officers and stormed the Capitol.
During one of the summer panel hearings, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump had been told some of his supporters were armed when he led the angry mob towards the Capitol that day. Trump recently took to Truth Social and slammed the January 6 investigators as “corrupt cowards who hate this country.” The House impeached him for his role in the attack, but the Senate acquitted him. Now he is running for president again in 2024.
The report represents the culmination of an 18-month congressional investigation that included more than 100 subpoenas, interviews with more than 1,200 witnesses, and the collation of hundreds of thousands of documents. Transcripts of those voluntary statements and interviews, as well as other written and video evidence, will also be shared with the public.
“They’ve conducted business with the seriousness it deserves, which is about our national security, it’s about our democracy,” said outgoing spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who was attacked in the attack and which he created on January 1st. 6 commission.
“They did it in a way that I think was done with dignity, factually and completely impartially.”
Like previous reports on the John F. Kennedy and the Terrorist Attack of 9/11, the January 6 report will be sent to a number of book publishers and is expected to become an instant bestseller. But on Jan. 6, chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said his report will be different in one significant way: The committee will release it digitally first, allowing the jury to link to the evidence it can provide to the public. .
“I think what we present to the public is important. This is why we released a digital version of the report to add more direction and flavor to the public’s understanding of everything we saw,” Thompson told reporters. “So while other reports have been just a bunch of pages, we think the digital part will add another dimension to it.”
