Jan. 6 committee prepares to deliver its judgment on Donald Trump

Source: Politico | December 18, 2022 | Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu

The select panel has its final public meeting scheduled for Monday afternoon and plans to release the first components of its final report.

The Jan. 6 select committee is preparing to unveil its most comprehensive case yet that Donald Trump attempted to subvert the transfer of presidential power to Joe Biden — first by pressuring allies at every level of government and then with the aid of a violent mob.

The panel plans to release the first components of its final report on Monday following an 18-month probe that featured explosive depositions from members of Trump’s West Wing, battles that reached the Supreme Court and access to some of the most sensitive papers held by Trump’s White House.

The panel has long contended Trump broke the law in service of his bid to seize a second term despite losing the 2020 election. But the new report is expected to add vivid new details of that effort, particularly about the cast of enablers that facilitated Trump’s gambit — from Republican members of Congress to a team of lawyers pushing fringe theories to shadowy operatives awash in conspiracy theories. The panel also plans to formally adopt a conclusion that Trump violated the criminal insurrection statute by providing “aid and comfort” to the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I think that the evidence is there that Donald Trump committed criminal offenses in connection with his efforts to overturn the election. And viewing it as a former prosecutor, I think there’s sufficient evidence to charge the president,” panel member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” though he declined to comment on specific charges.

The panel is expected to urge the Justice Department to pursue at least three criminal charges against the former president: insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States government. The referrals to the department are included in a sub-panel report that the full committee is expected to approve on Monday.

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The select committee’s final meeting comes on the two-year anniversary of Trump’s Dec. 19, 2020, tweet in which he urged allies to descend on Washington for a “wild” protest against the election results. Congressional and Justice Department investigators view that tweet as a crucial turning point — emboldening extremists who were seeking to aid Trump’s effort and sparking an intense focus on a day that is typically a ceremonial aspect of the transfer of power.

Court records show that in dozens of cases — particularly among members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys — the tweet was seen as a call to action and a validation of their desire to “stop the steal.”

Trump, who routinely reiterates discredited claims that the 2020 election was stolen and should be invalidated — a constitutional impossibility — spent the weekend railing against the select committee, which he described as a group of “misfits” and “thugs.”

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