After more than a year and a half of investigation, the January 6 committee released its full report Thursday, finding that former president Donald Trump and his allies are guilty of offenses against the United States for their roles in inciting the Capitol riot and seeking to disrupt the orderly transition of power.
Among the crimes the panel contends Trump committed are obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., making a false statement, and inciting an insurrection, the last of which could disqualify Trump from holding public office in the future. Trump recently announced his third presidential bid.
The Justice Department must now assess whether sufficient evidence exists to pursue Trump’s prosecution.
Some Republican critics of the committee’s findings have claimed that it failed to establish a criminally-actionable connection between Trump and the violence that erupted on January 6. On that day in 2021, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol with the intention of halting the certification of the 2020 election for Democrat Joe Biden, then the president elect. About 150 police officers were injured during the chaos, the New York Times reported in October. At least 964 people have been charged for their involvement in the riot, according to Business Insider.
Trump’s tweets in the direct aftermath of the incident were deemed inflammatory by Twitter, which banned him from the platform. The platform’s new CEO Elon Musk reinstated his account in November.
The non-incitement charges the committee recommended for Trump relate to his team’s use of attorney John Eastman's flawed legal theory that then-vice president Pence had authority to refuse to count electoral votes and overturn the outcome for Trump. Eastman also received a criminal referral on those two counts from the committee.
In June, the committee's chairman, Bennie Thompson, told CNN that the panel had ruled out making a formal criminal referral against Trump.
“That's not our job,” he at the time. “Our job is to look at the facts and circumstances around January 6, what caused it and make recommendations after that.”
On Monday, the committee ultimately did issue a criminal referral, a non-binding recommendation by Congress to the Justice Department to open an investigation. In compiling its report, the committee relied on 1,000 interviews as well as retrieved records including emails, texts, and phone records.
The committee also voted to refer four Republican lawmakers, including House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and Representatives Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, and Andy Biggs, to the House Ethics Committee over their refusal to honor the panel's subpoenas.
Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were the only Republicans on the nine-seat panel. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi handpicked the two anti-Trump Republicans after House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy boycotted the committee. McCarthy had originally proposed members who sympathized with the former president and his unsubstantiated stolen election narrative, namely Jordan and Jim Banks, but Pelosi quickly rejected those choices.
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