Landmark Jan. 6 report concludes Trump intentionally misled, provoked insurrectionists

The highest-profile congressional investigation since Watergate concluded Thursday that former President Trump intentionally spread false claims about the 2020 election and provoked a mob of his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol.

The long-anticipated, 845-page eight-chapter report from the House select committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection provides a road map for potential criminal charges against Trump and others.

The committee voted Monday to refer its findings to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. Among them are four possible federal charges against Trump, including assisting, aiding or comforting those involved in an insurrection.

The Justice Department is conducting its own investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, which left five people dead.

“As you read this report, please consider this: Vice President Pence, along with many of the appointed officials who surrounded Donald Trump, worked to defeat many of the worst parts of Trump’s plan to overturn the election,” committee Vice-Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) wrote in the foreword to the report. “This was not a certainty. It is comforting to assume that the institutions of our Republic will always withstand those who try to defeat our Constitution from within. But our institutions are only strong when those who hold office are faithful to our Constitution.”

The report released Thursday includes new details, beyond what the committee presented during nine public hearings this year. It also details how Trump and his allies plotted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results by using state legislatures and the courts.

“Our country has come too far to allow a defeated president to turn himself into a successful tyrant by upending our democratic institutions, fomenting violence, and, as I saw it, opening the door to those in our country whose hatred and bigotry threaten equality and justice for all Americans,” Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) wrote in the report’s foreword.

The 18-month investigation collected more than 1,000 depositions, including from many of Trump’s top aides, Cabinet officials and family members.

Thompson said Monday that the bulk of the nonsensitive material compiled by the panel will become public before the end of the year. Thompson has not said how many documents will be released or what will be deemed sensitive.

The report, which likely marks the final act of the bipartisan committee, includes a list of 11 recommendations and four appendices looking at the funding behind Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and the intelligence failures that allowed the attack to occur.

Republicans take control of the House on Jan. 3 and they’ve said they don’t plan to continue the committee’s work. In fact, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), the front-runner to become speaker next year, said Republicans may investigate the workings of the Jan. 6 committee itself.

That left the Jan. 6 panel racing to make its report and potentially millions of pages of underlying evidence public in less than two weeks.