Washington, Dec 22 – The parliamentary committee that has investigated the assault on the United States Capitol recommends in its final report, published tonight, that Congress approve a mechanism that prevents Donald Trump from running for election again.
The committee concludes in its final report that the “central” cause of what happened on January 6, 2021 was “a man, former President Donald Trump, who was followed by many others.”
The text confirms what has already been announced by the members of the committee, who are asking the Department of Justice to charge Trump and consider him guilty of four crimes: incitement to insurrection, obstruction of an official procedure of Congress, attempted fraud against the United States and conspiracy to submit false election testimony to Congress and the National Archives.
And among his recommendations there is one aimed at preventing Trump and his accomplices from running for public office.
Thus, it asks the “congressional committees with jurisdiction” to consider the creation of a “formal mechanism” that could prevent those who violate the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution from holding federal or state office.
Said amendment states that any person who has sworn to abide by the Constitution and has been involved in an “insurrection” or has “aided the enemies of the Constitution” can be “disqualified”, banned from holding future public office.
The report is published three days after the committee, in its last public hearing, announced that among its recommendations is to ask the Department of Justice to charge Trump for his role on January 6, 2021, since, in In his opinion, nothing that happened that day would have happened without his participation.
In the words of committee chair Bennie Thompson, this report provides “in detail” evidence “about the multi-step efforts led by Donald Trump to reverse the 2020 election result and block the transfer of power.”
In the text of the report, they stress that Trump was “aware” that he was trying to obstruct an official procedure, and that he was “personally involved” in trying to stop confirmation of the election results.
They also directly accuse him of “recruiting” tens of thousands of supporters, many of them armed and angry, to march on the Capitol and “fight to the death” on his behalf.
The committee recalls that the Department of Justice has prosecuted hundreds of individuals for the events of January 6, 2021, but insists that it is “crucial” to make Trump and those who tried to make his plans go ahead. .
“If Trump and those who assisted him in the effort to turn the electoral result around do not take responsibility” for what they did, their behavior could be a “precedent”, an “invitation to danger for future elections”, the text says.
Of the 850 pages that the report occupies, almost 600 include the testimonies of the interviews that the committee conducted with more than a thousand people, some broadcast on television during prime time and many others behind closed doors.
One of the most publicized was the one made to Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an assistant to former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, and who declared that the former president knew that many protesters carried weapons and that he even tried to grab the steering wheel of the presidential limousine to go to the Capitol.
The committee’s recommendations are not binding and it is the Justice Department, which is already conducting its own investigation, that has the power to charge Trump.
In any case, the symbolic and political value of these recommendations is historic because it is the first time that a parliamentary committee has suggested holding a former president criminally responsible.
In addition, legislators have stressed these days that the report, which comes to light almost two years after the assault on the Capitol, provides innumerable evidence that can help support the accusation against the former president that the Department of Justice can make.