The investigative committee of the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 unanimously agreed this Monday to urge the United States Attorney General's Office and Department of Justice to file criminal charges against Donald Trump and some of his closest collaborators for crimes of incitement to insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the nation, conspiracy to make a false statement, and obstruction of official congressional proceedings; specifically, the parliamentary ratification of Joe Biden's electoral victory in the 2020 presidential elections.
The historic decision of the nine members of the special committee of the House of Representatives -seven Democrats and two Republicans- culminates 18 months of investigation into the bloody coup attack on parliamentary headquarters that, according to them, was "orchestrated" by the then acting president and aimed at stopping the peaceful and democratic transfer of power, it resulted in five deaths that day plus four police suicides in subsequent days and months.
In that year and a half of investigations, the nine representatives led by Democrat Bennie Thompson interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and collected more than a million documents. The most relevant testimonies and reports were exhibited in ten public hearings broadcast live and followed by millions of viewers.
After a summary of the most relevant testimonies, videos and audios of the investigation, the members of the committee recounted the evidence of the pressure that the former president exerted to falsify the results of the presidential elections in several states; to convince other senior officials that the elections had been "stolen" despite knowing that it was not true, and finally to actively and passively support the coup against the Capitol on the day that Congress was to ratify -as it would after the rebellion – Biden's victory.
"Faith in the electoral system is the foundation of our democracy. Donald Trump broke that faith by trying to block the transfer of power and send a mob to the Capitol," Thompson said at the start of Monday's session. "If we want to survive as a nation of law and democracy, we cannot allow this to happen again," he added.
The vice president of the committee, the Republican and arch-enemy of Trump who is Liz Cheney, affirmed for her part that the former president "is not suitable" to occupy a new public office.
Noting the "shameful" scene of the outgoing leader "sitting in the Oval Office of the White House, watching the storming of the Capitol on television and avoiding for hours to deter the assailants," Cheney added: "Anyone who behaves like that in a time like this he will never be able to have a position of power in this country again.
The committee's decision not only affects Trump but also his former lawyer, John Eastman, and "others" that the parliamentary body did not cite but among whom may be former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and the leader's former lawyer. and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
The agreement of the investigative committee to recommend the imputation of Trump is not binding, although it does pave the way for the Prosecutor's Office, now in the final stretch of its own investigation of 6-E, to second it by filing charges against the former leader. In any case, it is the first time that a body of the US Congress has asked to prosecute a former president. Which is not little, although it is proportional in the case of a coup leader
