The January 6 Committee, a House panel dedicated to investigating what happened on and the events that led up to the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, has finally unveiled its long-awaited report.
The nearly 850-page report is a breakdown of all the evidence the committee gathered in its investigation, which culminated in four criminal referrals of former President Donald Trump to the Department of Justice.
The report was originally scheduled to be released on Wednesday evening, but a surprise speech from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky forced the committee to delay its plans, opting instead to release it on Thursday evening, just three days before Christmas and as the country was bracing more for extreme winter storms than lengthy congressional reports.
The four charges the committee wishes to see brought against Trump are obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., making a false statement, and inciting an insurrection – the last being a charge that, if found guilty, would bar Trump from running for office again.
The Department of Justice now has to weigh the Committee’s evidence with its own investigations into the former president before deciding if they will take up the charges. There is no obligation for the DOJ to do so.
The committee also referred four Republican Congressmen – House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and Representatives Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, and Andy Biggs – to the House Ethics Committee for their refusal to honor subpoenas to appear before the committee during its investigation.
The report and referrals are based on hundreds of interviews and hours of testimony that have spanned months. Republicans have pushed back with their own report, placing the blame of the chaos on the Democrats, and Nancy Pelosi in particular after she failed to obtain the proper Capitol security for a major protest that was expected to be held at the Capitol. That protest would become the riot labeled an “attempted insurrection” meant to restore Donald Trump to the presidency after he lost in 2022.
The committee was made up of all Democrats, save two Republicans – Adam Kinzinger, who chose not to run for re-election in November of this year, and Liz Cheney, who lost her bid for re-election.
