CBS News and numerous other agencies are reporting this same headline:
“January 6 committee
releases final report on Capitol riot, fixing blame on Trump and allies”
Key highlights: The panel wrote and concluded: “The evidence
presented over the course of its hearings shows a multi-part plan to overturn
the 2020 election that 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 814-page report devotes nearly 400 pages
to a narrative that places the blame for the Capitol riot squarely on Trump, beginning
with a chapter called “The Big Lie.”
Here, the committee sets
out to show that Trump planned even before the 2020 presidential election to
declare prematurely that he had won.
It quotes testimony by his
campaign team in which they informed Trump that he had lost the election and
that there had been no fraud.
The narrative walks
through Trump's alleged post-election efforts to retain power, including attempts
to replace slates of electors with fake alternate electors who would support
him, alleged efforts to subvert the Justice Department by replacing officials
who refused to make false statements that would help Trump remain in power and
plans to stop Congress' certification of the election on January 6.
The report also lists 11 recommendations
to prevent another January 6.
Among
them: (1) Barring
Trump from holding any federal or state office in the future, and (2) the passage of
the Electoral Count Act (ECA) to clarify the vice president's and Congress' narrow
roles in the presidential election and to make it more difficult to overturn
the results.
The official and full final January 6 House select committee report is here in .PDF format.
My earlier post below
shows Trump and some GOP reactions to this.
Trump and the GOP melt down after the January 6 completion
from NEWSWEEK vis-à-vis criminal
referrals headline:
“Trump Criminal
Referral Causes Republican Meltdown”
Other figures in Trump's orbit during the lead-up to the
Capitol riots were also singled out in the committee's final report as
co-conspirators involved in crafting the scheme to overturn the election. In
total, five listed below were also along with Trump referred to the DOJ for
criminal charges for their part in the insurrection, though all were not all
for the same charges:
1. Mark
Meadows, Trump’s former Chief of staff
2. John
Eastman, attorney who wrote fake electors plan
3. Rudy
Guiliani, Trump’s former personal attorney
4. Kenneth
Cheseboro, Trump’s legal advisor
5. Jeffrey
Clark. attorney who wanted to be acting AG
Then add in these few
disgusting GOP responses to the January 6 committee issuing criminal referrals
for Trump:
1. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) wrote in a statement: “House Republicans, who retook a slim
majority during the midterms, will hold House Democrats accountable for their
illegitimate abuse of power. House Democrats and Vicious Never Trumpers, who
were run out of Congress by the American people, continue to desperately and
unconstitutionally target President Trump and Republicans.”
This also from
Stefanik following the Mar-a-Lago raid that got classified documents there with
this story headline from FOX: “FBI's
history of scandals, controversies fuels Republican skepticism of agency amid
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago raid fallout.” Stefanik
also said on Fox News Digital the Mar-a-Lago
raid” is why the American people's trust in the FBI has eroded.”
Full disclosure: Right now Stefanik is still my Rep. in the House but due to redistricting, she now runs in a
totally new Upstate district – I have been a stanch critic of hers since
day-one, and on this I say to her now as usual: Just shut up.
Full story here vis-à-vis the
latest GOP’s anti-FBI rant:
2. Rep.
Marjorie Taylor
Greene (R-GA) tweeted:
“The J6 communist committee wants to stop President Trump because even after
stealing the election they can't beat him, so now they want to haul him into
court.”
3. Rudy
Giuliani, Trump's former personal lawyer tweeted: “It's clear that the purpose of the committee is
to destroy a man willing to stand up to the permanent Washington political
class and their corrupt cabal — the 45th President of the United States, Donald
J. Trump.”
4. Conservative journalist Kyle Becker tweeted: “People who love America don't do what the J6
committee did to a former president who is “guilty only of asserting his
constitutional right to challenge elections and to encourage people to peacefully
protest. Democrats are
the most un-American party in this nation's history.”
5. GOP pundit Tomi Lahren also tweeted: “The whole Jan 6th never-ending saga serves 2 purposes only: (1) An ATTEMPT to make irrelevant republicans relevant again (not gonna happen, and (2) to stigmatize ANY legit discussion on voter fraud.”
As for Trump, he responded on Truth Social attacking Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who
lost her reelection primary, as one of the two Republicans to sitting on the
committee along with (Rep. Adam Kinziner (R-IL), she who lost her re-nomination
during the GOP primary wrote: “... but Liz Chaney lost by a record 40 points!”
(Note: He misspelled Cheney's name).
Later, in another Truth Social post, Trump downplayed the criminal referrals as a “partisan attempt to sideline him” writing: “These folks don't get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me. It strengthens me. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. Americans know that I pushed for 20,000 troops to prevent violence on January 6, and that I went on television and told everyone to go home.”
Trump then added: “The people understand that the Democratic Bureau of
Investigation, the DBI, (Note: Not the FBI) are out to keep me from running for
president because they know I'll win and that this whole business of
prosecuting me is just like impeachment was: A partisan attempt to sideline me
and the Republican Party.”
My 2 Cents: The decision
to criminally refer Trump – as the January 6 ring leader, and those close to and
around him, is a giant step to ensuring that “No one is above the law” stands
for exactly that: Equal justice for all (14th Amendment).
Trump's attempt to take over
the government to stay in office after his 2020 loss is the highest
crime ever in our nation’s history by far.
We must never forget these three highlights from Trump as part of his “Big Lie:”
1. His telephone directive to the GA Secretary of State
saying: “Just find me 11,780 votes – that’s all I need.”
2. His denial of the words from his own former AG, William
Barr who told him that his claims of election fraud were — as Barr bluntly said in his January 6 sworn testimony seen in this short CNN video clip here: “Was b*ll
sh*t” while also affirming that there was no fraud on a scale that would affect
the outcome of the election.
3. His same tired, disproved, and discredited allegations that he had propagated so often at rallies, during news conferences, and on social media (none of it was true) then being totally exasperated that his own handpicked top appointees at the DOJ would not affirm his baseless allegations, he said to them: “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”
Trump and all those connected to him should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and get very long prison terms, period.
That would be justice and rightly so.
Thanks for stopping by.
No comments:
Post a Comment