Jan 6 Panel Blames Trump's 'Multi-Part Plan' To Overturn 2020 Poll Results For Capitol Hill Riots

Trump’s repeated and false claims of widespread voter fraud impacted his supporters and were amplified on social media, the committee said.

The damning findings come as Trump looks to run again for the US presidency

Source : AFP | PTI

New Delhi: The US House January 6 committee’s final report has said that former president Donald Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 US presidential election results. Concluding an 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection that took place 2 years ago, the report said Trump failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.

According to the Associated Press, the 814-page report released on Thursday came after the committee interviewed over 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings, and obtained millions of pages of documents.

The witnesses included Trump’s closest aides, law enforcement personnel, and even the rioters themselves who spoke about Trump’s actions in the weeks ahead of the insurrection. The panel found out how Trump's wide-ranging pressure campaign to overturn his defeat directly influenced the rioters who pushed the police and entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The central cause was “one man,”: Trump, the report said.

The nine-member panel concluded the insurrection gravely threatened democracy and “put the lives of American lawmakers at risk”.

Notably, the report mentions a White House photographer snapped a picture of Trump, learning of the riot from an employee at 1:21 p.m. “By that time, if not sooner, he had been made aware of the violent riot at the Capitol,” the report states, as per AP.

187 minutes passed between the time Trump finished his speech and his first effort to reach out to his supporters. During those hours, dozens of staffers and associates pleaded with him to make a statement, but he did not.

An eventual video message had him ask his supporters to go home even as he said, “We love you, you’re very special.”

Trump's Pressure On Officials, Lawmakers, Former Vice President Mike Pence To Trick The System

Outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a foreword to the report, stated that the findings should be a “clarion call to all Americans: to vigilantly guard our Democracy and to give our vote only to those dutiful in their defense of our Constitution.”

According to AP, the report’s eight chapters of findings describe Trump's pressure on states, federal officials, lawmakers, and the then vice president Mike Pence to trick the system or even break the law.

In the two months between the election and the insurrection, the report states, “President Trump or his inner circle engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure, or condemnation, targeting either State legislators or State or local election administrators, to overturn State election results.”

Trump’s repeated and false claims of widespread voter fraud impacted his supporters and were amplified on social media, the committee mentioned. The claims found resonance with the distrust of government he had fostered during his four years in office. He did little to stop them when they resorted to violence and stormed the Capitol, the report adds.

The damning findings come as Trump looks to run again for the US presidency while he was also criticised by Republicans for worse-than-expected results in the midterm elections, leaving him in his most politically vulnerable state since he won the 2016 election.

Posting on his social media site 'Truth Social', Trump hit back at the report calling it “highly partisan”. He falsely claimed it didn’t include his statement on Jan. 6 that his supporters should protest “peacefully and patriotically.”

The committee had noted that he had made that comment while putting across election falsehoods, also exhorting the crowd to “fight like hell.”

While the report also details a multitude of failings by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, it also points out that the security failures were not what actually led to the insurrection.