The committee investigating the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by supporters of Donald Trump has put an end to 18 months of work and recommends that the Department of Justice file criminal charges against the former president. This is the first time in the country’s history that Congress makes this decision, which has been adopted unanimously.
The commission considers that Trump obstructed an official proceeding and incited an insurrectionas well as conspiring to deceive the Federal Government and to make a false statement.
The petition will now be transferred to the Department of Justice, which is also investigating Trump in parallel for his involvement in those incidents.
“The entire obvious purpose and objective of Trump’s plan was to obstruct, influence and impede the legal transfer of power in the United States,” said Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of that committee.
The Republican president did not act alone: “He had a formal and informal agreement with several people who helped him with his criminal objectives”said the legislator, who trusted that the investigation of the Department of Justice offers a more detailed picture.
Today’s was no longer a hearing, but an executive meeting in which it was decided to approve the investigation document and the recommendation that the former president be criminally tried, something historic. The executive summary of the investigation will be presented next Wednesday.
While the Committee’s recommendations do not carry legal weight or compel the Justice Department to take any action, what they do is send a clear signal that the House Committee is convinced that the former president is wrong.
“Trump was sitting in the Oval Office of the White House watching the protests and the assault on the Capitol and made no statement.. She did nothing to stop it. No man should ever behave that way,” said Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, vice chair of the congressional committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.
“We understand the gravity of each and every suggestion that we are making today, just as we understand the magnitude of the crime against democracy that we describe in our report, but we have gone where the facts and the law take us, and they inevitably take us there. Raskin noted.
On January 6, 2021, some 10,000 people, most of them followers of the then Republican president, demonstrated in front of the Capitol and about 800 stormed the building as Democrat Joe Biden’s victory was ratified in the November presidential elections. There were 5 deaths and some 140 injured agents.
“There is no doubt that Trump thought that the actions of the assailants were justified,” said Democratic congresswoman Elaine Luria, for whom the then-president “threw gasoline on the fire” and spent hours watching it on television without doing anything to put out that fire.
The decision to bring charges rests ultimately with the attorney general, merrick garlandwho in November announced the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Trump for his possible involvement in the assault on the Capitol and for the classified documents found at his residence in Mar-a-Lago (Florida) after his departure from the White House.
This Monday was the tenth and last hearing of the committee, which has interviewed more than 1,000 people directly or indirectly involved in the insurrection in these months. The committee wanted to disseminate its conclusions before the start of the new Legislature on January 3because the new republican majority that will be from that day anticipates the dissolution of this body.
