Capitol riot committee aims to release report by summer

Supporters of Donald Trump storm the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 (EPA-EFE)

The House select committee investigating the 6 January insurrection is gearing up for a year of public hearings and the release of what could be several reports detailing different aspects of the worst attack on the US Capitol since Major General Robert Ross ordered it set ablaze in 1814.

Since last summer, the committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans has reviewed more than 30,000 documents and spoken to more than 300 witnesses, making what select committee chairman Bennie Thompson called “swift progress” at a meeting earlier this month.

“Before too long, our findings will be out in the open. We will have public hearings. We will tell this story to the American people. But we won’t do it piecemeal. We’ll do it when we can tell the story all at once, from start to finish, not leave anyone guessing and not allowing it to fade into the memories of last week’s news. This story is too important. The stakes are too high. We have to do this job right,” Mr Thompson said.

Members gave a small look at the sort of drama such hearings could bring during that business meeting, and later during a presentation on the House floor in support of a resolution to hold former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — a former House member himself — in contempt.

Each of the committee members who spoke revealed different portions of text messages turned over to the committee by Mr Meadows before he abruptly ended his cooperation with the probe.

The text messages, some of which Mr Meadows received from other Republican lawmakers, tell the story of a clear plot to pressure then-vice president Mike Pence into taking extralegal actions to hjack Congress’ quadrennial certification of electoral votes so former president Donald Trump — the loser of the 2020 election — could somehow be installed for a second term in the White House against the will of American voters.

They also reveal that some of the loudest voices who’ve spent the last year downplaying the significance of the attack on the Capitol in conservative media — including Fox stars Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity — were sending frantic text messages to Mr Meadows, begging him to get Mr Trump to make public statements calling off the mob of his supporters who’d occupied the Senate chamber and disrupted sessions of both the House and Senate.

According to The Washington Post, the committee will also be issuing a series of reports leading to an interim report released sometime in the summer of 2022, followed by a final report to precede the November midterm elections.

“I think we may issue a couple reports and I would hope for a [full] interim report in the summer, with the eye towards maybe another — I don’t know if it’d be final or another interim report later in the fall,” one committee staffer said.

Mr Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, also told the Post the committee will consider whether to turn over any evidence of crimes by Mr Trump or his associates to the Department of Justice, which has already acted on one such referral by charging ex-Trump aide Steve Bannon with criminal contempt of congress.

“This is the next progression — to see whether or not some of the things that we have uncovered or discovered rises to the level of a criminal referral,” he said.

Although such a referral can carry no real effect without action from the Justice Department, one committee aide told the Post the committee’s findings would be made public, not held back for delivery to the department.

“In terms of criminal referrals more broadly, we are asking questions and finding facts,” said the aide. “We’re not a law enforcement investigation, but we are finding facts, and we expect to make our findings public at the appropriate time for everyone to see”.