House committee releases full report on Jan. 6 insurrection

Dec. 22 (UPI) -- The House select committee investigating the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has released its long-anticipated report that is the culmination of its 17 months of work.

The 845-page document -- which comes days after the panel recommended four criminal charges against former President Donald Trump to the U.S. Justice Department -- clearly names him as being the central figure that spurred the mob of his supporters to siege the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States.

"In the Committee's hearings, we presented evidence of what ultimately became a multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 Presidential election. That evidence has led to an overriding and straight forward conclusion: the central cause of the 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," the report states.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi penned a foreword to the document in which she expressed her gratitude to Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wy., who led the bipartisan committee in its investigation.

"The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack has succeeded in bringing clarity and demonstrating with painstaking detail the fragility of our Democracy," Pelosi said in her foreword.

"Above all, the work of the Select Committee underscores that our democratic institutions are only as strong as the commitment of those who are entrusted with their care."

Pelosi added that the work of the committee serves as 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."

Thompson added in his own foreward that pins bearing a bald eagle normally worn by members of Congress "turned into a bullseye" during the riot as they were told to remove them.

"Donald Trump summoned that mob to Washington, D.C. Afterward, he sent them to the Capitol to try to prevent my colleagues and me from doing our Constitutional duty to certify the election. They put our very democracy to the test," Thompson said.

"Trump's mob came dangerously close to succeeding."

Cheney, who served as vice-chair on the committee, echoed her opening remarks before the panel's final hearing on Monday in which she laid out the investigation's major findings in Trump's "corrupt" plan to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

"Among the most shameful findings from our hearings was this: President Trump sat in the dining room off the Oval Office watching the violent riot at the Capitol on television," Cheney said in her foreward.

"For hours, he would not issue a public statement instructing his supporters to disperse and leave the Capitol, despite urgent pleas from his White House staff and dozens of others to do so."

The release Thursday also comes after the committee published its executive summary, a 154-page document that identified co-consipirators who aided the president with his plot.

The committee has also since released more than 40 witness testimony transcripts in which those close to Trump routinely invoked the Fifth Amendment -- the article of the U.S. Constitution which protects against self-incrimination.

At least five people were killed in connection to the siege on the Capitol and more than 140 police officers were injured as they attempted to thwart the mob of pro-Trump supporters from attacking the building.

Hundreds have since been arrested and charged for crimes ranging from knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building to seditious conspiracy.

The bipartisan committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans charged with investigating the causes of of the Jan. 6 attack was formed following a May 2021 House vote despite Republican opposition.

Between then and the release of its final report Thursday, the committee held a series of explosive public hearings that included testimony from close allies to the former president that the lawmakers used to piece together a narrative targeting Trump, whom they accuse of being at the center of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 general election.

The committee puts forward 11 recommendations, chief among them barring Trump, and those who aided in the insurrection, from running for office again.

"The Committee believes that those who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and then, on January 6th, engaged in insurrection can appropriately be disqualified and barred from holding government office -- whether federal or state, civilian or military -- absent at least two-third of Congress acting to remove the disability pursuant to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment."