Explained | The U.S. House Select Committee report on the January 6 Capitol attack
The HinduThe story so far: “The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump…None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him,” concluded the U.S. House Select Committee in its final report released on Thursday, December 22, after an 18-month-long probe in which it conducted over 1,000 interviews, 10 public hearings, and collected millions of documents as part of the evidence. The 814-page final report describes through eight chapters, the “multi-part conspiracy” by Mr. Trump and his aides to “overturn the lawful results of the 2020 Presidential election”. “These false claims provoked his supporters to violence on January 6.” The report states that the former President, despite advisers, the Justice Department, and Mr. Pence communicating to him that there was no evidence of fraud and the allegations had all turned out to be false, addressed multiple public gatherings making false claims of voter fraud and raised funds amounting to a quarter of a billion dollars between the election and January 6. After the lawsuits failed, Mr. Trump began to pressure his deputy Mike Pence to refuse the counting of electoral college votes for some States, despite being informed that the Vice President only plays a “ministerial” role of opening the envelopes and overseeing the vote count in the joint session.