Trump should never hold office again over Capitol riot: House Committee

The US House committee investigating the last year’s Capitol riot has pointed the finger of blame at former President Donald Trump, concluding in a long-awaited report that the real estate billionaire should never be allowed to run for public office again over inciting the deadly violence.

The House committee lawmakers probing the assault on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 concluded in their final report, released late Thursday, that Trump was to blame for the deadly incident and also accused him of orchestrating the riot in a failed attempt to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.

“The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” the report asserted in its executive summary, placing the mob invasion of the Capitol within “a multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 Presidential election.”

The 845-page report, produced after months of witness testimony heard by the bipartisan nine-member panel, said, “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” in the two months between the election and the Capitol riots.

Bennie Thompson, the panel's chairman, said in an introduction to the report that "our country has come too far to allow a defeated president to turn himself into a successful tyrant by upending our democratic institutions and fomenting violence.”

Thompson called on lawmakers to legislate so that Trump and others who "engaged in insurrection" can be barred from holding office "whether federal or state, civilian or military."

The panel concluded that Trump should be charged with four offenses, including insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the US, and obstructing a congressional proceeding.

Posting on his social media site, the former US president called the report “highly partisan” and falsely claimed it had not included his statement on January 6 that his supporters should protest “peacefully and patriotically.”

The committee did include that statement, though, and noted that he followed that comment with election falsehoods and charged language exhorting the crowd to “fight like hell.”

MG