U.S. House Panel recommends barring Trump from holding federal office

The U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, alleged insurrection has released its long-awaited final report, with a recommendation that former President Donald Trump should be barred from holding office again.

However, Trump in a series of social media posts overnight called the select committee’s report “highly partisan” and repeated the claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him.

The damning 845-page report was issued last Thursday, three days after the bipartisan committee voted unanimously to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation and possible prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

Among the recommendations is that congressional committees with such authority consider creating a “formal mechanism for evaluating whether to bar “Trump from holding future federal office due to evidence that he violated his constitutional oath to support the U.S. Constitution while engaging in an insurrection.”

The report comes weeks after Trump announced that he would seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024.

“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,” wrote committee Chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., in a foreword to the report.

The committee’s Vice Chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., wrote in her own foreword, “Every President in our history has defended this orderly transfer of authority, except one.”

“January 6, 2021 was the first time one American President refused his constitutional duty to transfer power peacefully to the next,” Cheney wrote.
The first of the report’s eight chapters is titled ‘The Big Lie’, a reference to Trump’s repeated false claims that he had won the election.
That chapter notes that Trump made efforts even before Election Day to “delegitimise the election process” by suggesting it would be marred by ballot fraud, particularly in connection with mail-in voting whose use was expanded due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The second chapter, titled ‘I Just Want to Find 11,780 Votes,’ details Trump’s attempt to subvert the Electoral College, the body that actually chooses the winner of presidential elections on the basis of candidates’ popular vote victories in individual states, and portions of two states.

The title refers to what Trump said to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a January 2, 2021, phone call, during which the president pressured Raffensperger to take steps that would invalidate Biden’s popular victory in that state.

That chapter also details the widespread campaign by Trump and his allies to get Republican-controlled legislatures in states that Biden had won to not certify the election results or to replace slates of Electoral College electors.

“The Select Committee estimates that in the two months between the November election and the January 6th insurrection, President Trump or his inner circle engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure or condemnation, targeting either State legislators or State or local election administrators, to overturn State election results,” the report says.

“This included at least: 68 meetings, attempted or connected phone calls, or text messages, each aimed at one or more State or local officials; 18 instances of prominent public remarks, with language targeting one or more such officials; and 125 social media posts by President Trump or senior aides targeting one or more such officials, either explicitly or implicitly, and mostly from his own account,” the report says.

The next chapters outline how Trump and his allies aimed to get alternate slates of electors for him presented to Congress over the actual slates that Biden won, their efforts to get the Department of Justice to cast doubt on the integrity of the election, and to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify several states’ Electoral College slates.

The plan to pressure Pence was designed to throw the decision on who would win the election into the House of Representatives. Despite Democrats holding a majority of the seats in that chamber at the time, Republicans could have delivered the victory to Trump because they held the majority of state delegations, which each get a single vote under the system.

The last three chapters focus on the lead-up to the Capitol riot, Trump’s “dereliction” of duty by refusing to call off the mob and an analysis of the attack on the Capitol.

Cheney, in her foreword to the report, noted, “What most of the public did not know before our investigation is this: Donald Trump’s own campaign officials told him early on that his claims of fraud were false.”
“Donald Trump’s senior Justice Department officials — each appointed by Donald Trump himself —investigated the allegations and told him repeatedly that his fraud claims were false,” Cheney wrote.
“Donald Trump’s White House lawyers also told him his fraud claims were false. From the beginning, Donald Trump’s fraud allegations were concocted nonsense, designed to prey upon the patriotism of millions of men and women who love our country.”

In its recommendations, the January 6 committee urged the Senate to pass the Electoral Count Act, which the House already has approved. The Act would reaffirm that a vice president has no authority or discretion to reject an official slate of presidential electors submitted by the governors of their states.

The panel also said courts and bar disciplinary bodies that regulate conduct by lawyers “should continue to evaluate the conduct of attorneys described in this Report.”
“Attorneys should not have the discretion to use their law licences to undermine the constitutional and statutory process for peace-fully transferring power in our government,” the report says.

In a recommendation titled ‘Violent Extremism,’ the report says, “Federal Agencies with intelligence and security missions, including the Secret Service, should … move forward on whole-of-government strategies to combat the threat of violent activity posed by all extremist groups, including white nationalist groups and violent anti-government groups while respecting the civil rights and First Amendment civil liberties of all citizens.”

Trump revealed his fury with the report almost as soon as it dropped late on Thursday night, when he once again repeated his “election fraud” claim and fumed that the investigation was a “witch hunt”.

“The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C., show the “Peacefully and Patrioticly” words I used, or study the reason for the protest, Election Fraud. WITCH HUNT!” he wrote in a Truth Social post.
Culled from CNBC and Independent