The House select committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, suggests preventing former President Donald Trump from running for office again.
The recommendation is one of the panel's proposals in its final report, which was issued late Thursday night and provides a thorough summary of its findings on how Trump and his supporters attempted to rig the 2020 presidential election.
While stating in its executive summary that it had evidence supporting potential charges of conspiring to harm or obstruct an officer and seditious conspiracy, the committee on Monday in its final open hearing referred Trump to the Justice Department on at least four criminal allegations.
The 845-page report alleges that Trump "oversaw" the legally dubious effort to put forward phony slates of electors in seven states he lost, claiming that evidence shows he actively worked to "transmit false Electoral College ballots to Congress and the National Archives" despite concerns among his lawyers that doing so could be illegal.
"That evidence has led to an overriding and straightforward conclusion: the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him," the report states.
The committee details Trump's inaction while the incident was occurring, adding that while watching the riot on television, he did not request security assistance and rebuffed staffers' requests that he call off his followers.
The Mississippi Democrat who chairs the committee, Bennie Thompson, expressed his complete confidence in the committee's ability to help create a path to justice and that the institutions and agencies in charge of ensuring that the rule of law is upheld will use the data we've provided to help in their work.
The Justice Department's investigations into Trump, including those into his post-election behavior and the secret materials discovered at his Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this year, are being led by special counsel Jack Smith.
One of the committee's 11 recommendations as a result of its inquiry is to bar Trump from further public service.
The panel focuses on the provision of the Constitution that specifies that a person who has taken an oath to protect the US Constitution but has "engaged in an insurrection" or given "aid or comfort to the enemies of the Constitution" can be removed from office. The committee has referred the former president and others to the Department of Justice for helping or enabling an insurgency.
It requests that congressional committees of jurisdiction establish a "formal mechanism" for determining whether persons who violate that portion of the 14th Amendment should be prohibited from holding future federal or state office.
