Committee investigating the invasion of the Capitol releases final report; see what was discovered

The House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 invasion of the US Capitol has released the final report, a comprehensive look at the bipartisan panel’s findings on how former President Donald Trump and his allies sought to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.

The full report – based on more than 1,000 interviews, collected documents including emails, texts, phone records and a year and a half investigation – includes allegations that Trump “oversaw” the legally dubious effort to present false election cards in seven states he lost.

Arguing that evidence shows he actively worked to “transmit false Electoral College ballots to Congress and the National Archives,” despite his lawyers’ concerns that doing so could be illegal.

In a symbolic move on Monday, the committee at its last public meeting referred Trump to the Justice Department on at least four criminal charges, while saying in its executive summary it had evidence of possible charges of conspiracy to harm or impede an official and seditious conspiracy.

“At the Committee hearings, we presented evidence of what turned out to be a multi-party plot to overthrow the 2020 presidential election,” the report states.

“This evidence led to an absolute and straightforward conclusion: the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”

Committee chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said Monday that he has “every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a roadmap for justice and that responsible agencies and institutions for ensuring fairness under the law will use the information we provide to assist in their work.”

the special adviser Jack Smith is leading Justice Department investigations related to Trump, including his post-election actions and classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this year.

The reporters from CNN are reading the document. Here’s what’s in the report:

Committee identifies attorney Kenneth Chesebro as architect of fake voter conspiracy

The Jan. 6 committee identifies a little-known pro-Trump lawyer as the original architect of the legally dubious fake election plan: Kenneth Chesebro 🇧🇷

the conservative lawyer John Eastman wrote an infamous memo detailing step-by-step how then-Vice President Mike Pence could theoretically overturn the 2020 election results.

But the committee points to Chesebro, a well-known associate of Eastman, as responsible for creating the false voter plot. “The bogus election plan grew out of a series of legal memos written by an external legal adviser to the Trump campaign: Kenneth Chesebro,” the report reads.

It was already known that Chesebro was involved in the fake voter scheme, but the committee’s conclusion about his leadership role is new.

The effort to present fake pro-Trump voter lists has come under scrutiny from federal and state prosecutors investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

The committee wrote that Chesebro sent a memo to Trump’s then-lawyer, Rudy Giuliani following a request from the former president’s campaign official about a “‘Senate President’ strategy,” which erroneously stated that the vice president could choose which presidential voters to count during the joint session of Congress on January 6.

“Memorandums from Chesebro on November 18, December 9, and December 13 laid the groundwork for the plan.”

THE CNN had already asked Chesebro to comment on these topics and he did not respond.

Trump called Eastman the day he wrote the memo

Eastman reached out to Trump on December 23, 2020, the same day he wrote his initial memo on Pence’s theory.

Eastman emailed Trump’s assistant, molly michael at 13:32 [horário local]according to the committee.

“Is the president available for a very quick call today at some point? I just want to update you on our overall strategic thinking.”

The committee wrote that Eastman received a call from the White House switchboard and the call lasted 23 minutes, according to Eastman’s phone records.

Eastman’s two-page memo discussed several ways to ensure that “President Trump is re-elected,” although, until then, he had been projected to lose the election, according to the committee.

These new details show how the committee used emails and phone records obtained after successfully fighting in court to obtain the documents.

The committee obtained Eastman’s emails after a judge sided with the House in a lawsuit in which the committee charged Eastman and Trump with a criminal conspiracy to obstruct Congress and defraud the government.

Trump latched on to Eastman’s theories that he incorrectly claimed Pence could overturn the election, and launched a pressure campaign against Pence in the days leading up to January 6.

Eastman was present at the January 4, 2021, meeting between Trump and Pence in the Oval Office, where Trump tried to convince Pence that he could intervene when Congress certified the Electoral College vote on January 6.

Committee refers Trump to Justice Department

The House committee presents a series of criminal statutes it believes were violated in the conspiracies to prevent Trump’s defeat and says there is evidence of criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Trump, Eastman and “others”.

The summary of the report first released on Monday says there is evidence to prosecute Trump on a number of crimes, including obstructing official process, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make false statements, aiding or aiding a insurrection, conspiring to injure or impede an official, and seditious conspiracy.

The panel says it also has the evidence to indict Eastman on the obstruction charge and names him as a co-conspirator in other alleged criminal activities that lawmakers have gathered evidence for.

The commission alluded to evidence of criminal obstruction of the House investigation, but the summary did not elaborate on that evidence.

Trump’s false declaration of victory was “premeditated”

The committee outlines 17 findings from its investigation that support its reasoning for criminal referrals, including that Trump knew the fraud claims he was pushing were false and continued to amplify them anyway.

“President Trump’s decision to falsely declare victory on election night and illegally call for a halt to the vote count was not a spontaneous decision. It was premeditated,” the report states.

The committee also disclosed emails from Tom Fitton chairman of the conservative Judicial Watch group, before the 2020 presidential election that they said Trump should declare victory regardless of the outcome.

He notes that Trump’s key allies, including those who testified before the committee, have acknowledged that they have not found any evidence to support the former president’s allegations.

“Ultimately, even Rudolph Giuliani and his legal team recognized that they had no definitive evidence of voter fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the election,” he adds, referring to Trump’s then-personal lawyer.

“For example, although Giuliani has repeatedly claimed in public that the Dominion voting machines stole the election, he admitted during his Select Committee testimony that ‘I don’t think the voting machines stole the election,’” he says.

Trump refused to act as the riot unfolded

The committee exposes Trump’s failure to act as the riot unfolded, noting that while watching the situation on television, he made no requests for security assistance and resisted efforts by officials who urged him to call off his supporters.

“President Trump did not contact a single national security official during the day. Not the Pentagon, not the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Capitol Police Department or the office of the Mayor of DC,” writes the committee.

“As Vice President Pence has confirmed, President Trump has not even attempted to reach out to his own Vice President to ensure that Pence is safe.”

Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee he had this reaction to Trump: “You know, you’re the commander in chief. You have an attack going on in the United States Capitol. And there’s nothing? No calls? Nothing? Zero?”.

Meanwhile, White House officials described being shocked that, while the Capitol was under attack, Trump fired off a tweet criticizing Pence.

Hicks texted a colleague that night to say, “Attack the VP? What’s wrong with him,” according to the committee’s summary report.

“There are no photos of the president for the rest of the afternoon until after 4pm. President Trump appears to have instructed the White House photographer not to take any photographs,” the committee writes, citing the testimony of former White House photographer Shealah Craighead.

Then, on the night of Jan. 6, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale told Katrina Pierson, one of the rally organizers, that he felt guilty about helping Trump win, the report states.

The day’s events, Parscale said, resulted from “a sitting president calling for civil war.”