Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, mocked conspiracy theories about who was responsible for the attack on the Capitol.
“This is not an Agatha Christie novel, we know exactly whodunnit,” he told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle in an interview on Friday.
Raskin referred to unfounded right-wing conspiracy theories that antifa was responsible for the attack, saying the proponents of such theories should “bring the evidence forward” if they have any, but the bipartisan committee found no evidence of antifa being involved.
“It’s just impossible to think of any of this happening without Donald Trump being the central instigator of the whole thing,” he said.
The four charges the committee referred to the DOJ against Trump are obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make false statements and inciting or providing aid and comfort to those participating in an insurrection.
The committee has also released dozens of transcripts from its interviews with key witnesses, including Trump campaign attorney John Eastman, former Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
Raskin said the committee believes it has “comprehensive and overwhelming documentary proof” of all the charges it referred against Trump.
“We were, if anything, very conservative and very cautious in the charges that we advanced,” he said.
He said the committee hopes and trusts that the DOJ and special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the department’s investigation, will do their job to hold “kingpins” involved responsible.
“There needs to be a serious reckoning of individual accountability for the people that set all of these events into motion,” Raskin said.
He also noted that Trump was the one who got the Capitol rioters to protest on Jan. 6. He said the groups were originally going to protest on Jan. 21, one day after President Biden was inaugurated, but Trump pushed for the day that Congress was set to read the votes of the Electoral College.
“He was the one that galvanized the extreme right in the country to focus on the peaceful transfer of power as the target of their wrath and violence,” Raskin said.
He said he believes Republicans who voted to acquit Trump during his second impeachment trial over his involvement in the insurrection are having “quitter’s remorse” as Trump has been “exposed to the world as the person who orchestrated all of these events to try to topple our constitutional order.”
“They’re very afraid that if they don’t nominate him, he will take 30 or 40 percent of the party with him,” Raskin said, referring to Trump’s candidacy for president in 2024. “And that could be the end of the GOP.”
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol released its highly anticipated final report Thursday night, capping off the panel’s year-and-a-half-long probe.
The final document includes eight chapters, an executive summary and a list of 11 legislative recommendations, all of which are part of the committee’s responsibility of investigating the events surrounding Jan. 6 and putting forward suggestions to prevent a similar event from happening in the future.
“This report will provide greater detail about the multistep effort devised and driven by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election and block the transfer of power,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the committee, wrote in a foreword in the report.
“Building on the information presented in our hearings earlier this year, we will present new findings about Trump’s pressure campaign on officials from the local level all the way up to his Vice President, orchestrated and designed solely to throw out the will of the voters and keep him in office past the end of his elected term,” he added.
The report was initially set to publish on Wednesday, but the committee punted the release to Thursday. The panel did not give a reason for the delay, but the announcement came a few hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered an address to a joint meeting of Congress.
The body of work largely details arguments and evidence the committee laid out during its series of public hearings this year. But for the first time, the panel outlined its full slate of legislative recommendations, including one that seeks to bar Trump from holding office in the future under the 14th Amendment.
The panel argued that Trump should not be allowed to serve in government office because the constitutional amendment prohibits people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding such posts. The committee pointed to Trump’s impeachment by the House on incitement of insurrection, cited the 57 senators who voted to convict him and referenced its criminal referral to the Justice Department on a similar charge.
The committee also recommended increased subpoena enforcement for Congress and more aggressive oversight of the Capitol Police, among other suggestions.
The release of the final report marks the final act of the committee’s sprawling investigation, which has been ongoing since the panel was created in the summer of 2021.
The group held 11 public presentations, interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and poured over thousands of documents during the past 18 months to understand the events before, on and after Jan. 6.
As a precursor to the publication of the report, the panel made its final public presentation on Monday, during which members voted on criminal referrals to the Justice Department that target Trump.
The panel recommended that the agency investigate Trump for inciting, assisting or aiding and comforting an insurrection; obstructing an official proceeding; conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make a false statement.
The referrals, while symbolic, do not have any legal heft because the Justice Department is not required to investigate recommendations from congressional committees.
But they nonetheless marked a significant moment in the committee’s quest to make its case to the American people that Trump was at the heart of a conspiracy to keep himself in the White House.
“In the Committee’s hearings, we presented evidence of what ultimately became a multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 Presidential election,” the report reads. “That evidence has led to an overriding and straight forward 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 added.
Ahead of the release of the final report, the committee published the transcripts of a number of witness testimonies — including two conversations the panel had with Cassidy Hutchinson.
During those discussions, the former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows detailed an effort by what she referred to as “Trump World” to lessen the effect of her testimony and hold back information from investigators.
The referrals and release of the report and transcripts come at a particularly tenuous moment for Trump, whose third bid for the White House is struggling to pick up steam amid poor polls and mockery over a new business venture involving digital trading cards.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday issued a terse response to the House Jan. 6 select committee’s decision to refer criminal charges against former President Trump to the Justice Department.
“The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day. Beyond that, I don’t have any immediate observations,” McConnell said in a statement reacting to the House panel voting to refer four criminal charges against Trump to prosecutors in connection to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, recommended the Justice Department investigate Trump for inciting insurrection, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiring to defraud the United States and conspiring to make a false statement.
The panel also recommended a formal ethics investigation of the role that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and several allies — Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) — played on Jan. 6 and in the days before.
McConnell's statement responding to the action on the other side of the Capitol was bolder than those from some members of his leadership team.
Retiring Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (Mo.) said he “had no idea” of the details of the referral.
Incoming Senate Republican Conference Vice Chairwoman Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said, “I never heard of Congress instructing [the Justice Department] in that way."
She said the committee’s work was “obviously politicized.”
McConnell denounced Trump on the Senate floor in February 2021 after the former president was acquitted on the impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection.
“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” McConnell said, after voting to acquit the president on the technical grounds that he no longer held the office.
Since then, McConnell has regularly declined to comment when asked what responsibility Trump bore for spreading the unsubstantiated belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol escalated its clash with Republican lawmakers on Monday, recommending a formal ethics inquiry into House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and other top allies of former President Trump for their refusal to cooperate with the probe.
The recommendations to the House Ethics Committee mark a milder step than the criminal referrals to the Justice Department that the select committee made Monday against Trump and several members of the former president’s inner circle for their role in the Capitol riot.
But as a political matter, the ethics complaints will shine a bright light on the actions of McCarthy and three other prominent House Republicans — Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Andy Biggs (Ariz.) — in the lead-up to and the aftermath of the attack. Those actions ranged from attending Jan. 6 planning meetings with Trump at the White House, as Jordan had done, to having conversations with the then-president in the midst of the riot, as McCarthy had done.
The committee had initially requested that those four lawmakers, among others, appear voluntarily before the panel. When the Republicans refused, the panel issued subpoenas for their testimony in May, almost a year into the sweeping investigation into Trump’s efforts to remain in power after his 2020 defeat.
None of them complied with the inquest, arguing the select committee was, from the start, a political witch hunt orchestrated by Trump’s adversaries — most notably Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — to damage Trump’s chances of winning another term in the White House. Heightening those accusations, Trump last month announced his entrance into the 2024 presidential race.
During Monday’s gathering on Capitol Hill, the last in a long series of public forums to air its findings, the select committee argued that ignoring congressional subpoenas — even for sitting lawmakers — sets a dangerous precedent that will hobble Congress’s powers to function effectively as an oversight body.
It’s unclear if the Ethics panel will launch an investigation based on the select committee’s new recommendations. Unlike most other standing committees, membership on the Ethics panel is evenly divided between the parties. And the committee strives — at least rhetorically — to avoid the divisive partisan politicking that practically defines some of the other panels.
Yet with just weeks left in the 117th Congress, there’s a small and closing window for the committee to launch any new probes while Democrats are still in the House majority. And it’s unlikely that a GOP-led Ethics panel would take the remarkable step of investigating the role of sitting Republicans in an event as polarizing as the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Indeed, in a sign of how partisan Jan. 6 has become, McCarthy — who is vying to become Speaker next year and has outsize influence over committee chair spots — is vowing to investigate the Jan. 6 investigation as a first order of business in the new Congress.
Heading into Monday’s forum, panel members seemed resigned to the idea that they had little recourse against McCarthy and the other Republicans who refused to cooperate in the short window before the panel sunsets.
"We don't have a lot of time right now," Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), one of the two Republicans on the select committee, told reporters last week. "That's the reality of where we're at."
By their own telling, each of the Republicans has information pertaining to the Jan. 6 attack that is relevant to the investigation.
McCarthy had called Trump from the Capitol amid the attack, urging the president to call off his supporters, and he later went to the House floor to say Trump bore responsibility for the rampage. But despite initially supporting an outside investigation into the riot, McCarthy reversed course after Trump opposed the idea.
Jordan, another close Trump ally, was among the most vocal proponents of Congress’s effort to overturn Trump’s defeat in certain closely contested states. He’d attended a meeting at the White House in late December of 2020, just weeks before Jan. 6, to help plan the Republicans’ strategy for blocking Congress’s vote to formalize President Biden’s victory. And he was on a conference call on Jan. 2, 2021, for the same purpose. Jordan also spoke with Trump more than once on Jan. 6.
Russell Dye a spokesperson for Jordan dismissed the referral as “just another partisan and political stunt made by a Select Committee that knowingly altered evidence, blocked minority representation on a Committee for the first time in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives, and failed to respond to Mr. Jordan’s numerous letters and concerns surrounding the politicization and legitimacy of the Committee’s work.”
Perry, who rose in prominence as a staunch Trump defender during the former president’s first impeachment, has caught the attention of Jan. 6 investigators for his role in pushing Trump to install Jeffrey Clark as head of the Justice Department after the election. Clark was sympathetic to Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign, and Republicans saw him as an ally in the effort to use the Justice Department to keep Trump in office.
Biggs, a former head of the far-right Freedom Caucus, had been a part of a campaign led by Arizona state lawmakers to seat a slate of alternative electors who would side with Trump despite his loss in the Grand Canyon State.
A fifth GOP lawmaker, Rep. Mo Brooks (Ala.), had also been a target of investigators for his coordination with the Trump White House leading up to Jan. 6 as well as his combative speech on the Ellipse that morning, when Brooks, clad in body armor, urged the crowd to “start taking down names and kicking ass.”
Brooks, who lost a bid for Alabama Senate this year, is not returning to Capitol Hill next year, and the Jan. 6 committee did not include him on its list of ethics referrals.
Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) is eyeing legislation that would bar former President Trump from serving in office under the 14th Amendment “for leading an insurrection against the United States.”
Cicilline, who served as an impeachment manager during Trump’s first impeachment, sent a letter to his Democratic colleagues Tuesday night previewing a bill to prevent Trump from holding office and soliciting co-sponsors for the measure.
It is unclear when the congressman plans to introduce the bill. The listed deadline for lawmakers to co-sponsor the measure is Thursday at noon.
“Given the proof – demonstrated through the January 6th Committee Hearings, the 2021 impeachment trial, and other reporting – that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection on January 6th with the intention of overturning the lawful 2020 election results, I have drafted legislation that would prevent Donald Trump from holding public office again under the Fourteenth Amendment,” Cicilline wrote.
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Trump was impeached for a second time in January 2021 on the charge of “incitement of insurrection” following the Capitol riot, but the Senate ultimately acquitted him. The House impeached him for a first time in December 2019 for “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress” over revelations regarding his dealings with Ukraine, though the Senate acquitted him of both charges.
Cicilline argued that Trump should be barred from holding office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, known as the “Disqualification Clause,” which says individuals should not be allowed “to hold any office” if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
The congressman said his bill “details testimony and evidence demonstrating how Donald Trump engaged in insurrection against the United States,” pointing to revelations from Jan. 6 select committee hearings.
“It specifically details how Donald Trump engaged in insurrection when he helped to plan and encouraged the insurgence on January 6th despite knowing that the election results were lawful; attempted to intimidate state and federal officials when they did not support his false claims and unlawful plans; tried to manipulate Mike Pence into unlawfully refusing to certify the election results, despite Mr. Pence’s and legal advisors’ assertion that he held no such authority; and supported the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, refusing for hours to denounce or act against the mob and putting thousands of lives in danger,” the letter reads.
If he introduces the bill, Cicilline will have to lay out the process for how the measure would use Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the text is vague.
“It is unclear whether Section 3 is self-executing, which, if it is not, would leave federal and state courts or election authorities without power to determine the eligibility of candidates unless Congress enacts legislation to permit it. Courts have produced mixed results on this question,” the CRS report reads.
“Section 3 does not expressly provide a procedure for its implementation other than Section 5’s general authority of Congress ‘to enforce [the Fourteenth Amendment’ by appropriate legislation,’” it adds.
Trump announced his intention for a third presidential bid Tuesday night at his Mar-a-Lago resort, telling the audience at the event "we always have known that this was not the end. It was only the beginning of our fight to rescue the American dream."
"In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States," he added.
For more takeaways from Thursday night's hearing, we turn to a member of the Jan. 6 select committee, who also served as the lead impeachment manager in President Trump's second impeachment trial. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin joins Judy Woodruff to discuss some of the revelations from the first public hearing on the Capitol insurrection.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) didn't make any new friends in the GOP with her star turn bashing former President Trump in prime time on Thursday night. It doesn't bother her a bit.
Cheney, a dynastic figure who sits in the House seat once held by her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, used her high perch on the Jan. 6 select committee to accuse Trump of abusing the powers of the presidency to orchestrate nothing short of an attempted coup — explosive charges that have reinforced her status as Public Enemy No. 1 in the eyes of the MAGA faithful.
The much-watched hearing has further complicated Cheney’s path to reelection in deep-red Wyoming, a Trump stronghold where her primary opponent has the energetic backing of the 45th president, who is actively stumping against the mutinous incumbent.
But as Cheney's attacks on Trump have grown only louder, it's increasingly clear that she's motivated by something other than securing her future in the lower chamber. Whether that thing is a self-sacrificing desire to save the country's democratic traditions from the former president or an egomaniacal effort to advance her own fame and political powers largely depends on the perspective of her fans and critics.
What is not in question is that Cheney has staked her legacy on her relentless anti-Trump activism — a reputation that will become only more deeply entrenched as the select committee airs its investigative findings in a long series of public hearings that will dominate discussion in Washington through the rest of the month.
“President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the select committee, said during the panel’s prime-time hearing Thursday night.
For the like-minded Trump critics, Cheney is an enormous asset to the investigation, offering the committee not only a good dose of bipartisan legitimacy, but also a seasoned legal mind who knows the ins and outs of the GOP conference and its complicated dealings with the former president.
“She’s an awesome lawyer, … [and] she was the chair of the House Republican Conference,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a former professor of constitutional law who also sits on the investigative panel. “So she obviously knows the terrain better than anyone else on the committee.”
To Trump’s allies on and off of Capitol Hill, however, Cheney is simply a traitor to the party — a “Pelosi Republican” who’s been all but disowned as GOP leaders try to tap Trump’s popularity in their effort to flip control of the House in November’s midterm elections.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who wants to take the speakership next year, said this week that the responsibility for the Jan. 6 falls on “everybody in the country.”
In one sense, Cheney is an unlikely figure to assume the role of Republican iconoclast. Her family ranks among the most powerful GOP dynasties of the last half century, and her father's unique brand of conservatism — combined with his no-apologies approach to power-policymaking — made him a favorite with the Republican base.
In a similar vein, Liz Cheney’s staunch conservative positions — including strong attacks on gay marriage during an early campaign — made her a villain in the eyes of Democrats nationwide, but helped propel her quickly into the leadership ranks once she arrived on Capitol Hill in 2017.
In another sense, however, Cheney is the natural fit to play Trump's foil.
Trump had devoted much of his successful 2016 campaign bashing the overseas entanglements of the Bush-Cheney administration, most notably the 2003 decision to launch the Iraq War, which was championed by the elder Cheney. After taking the White House, Trump continued those attacks on the old Republican guard that had pushed an aggressively interventionist foreign policy, a group that included both of the Cheneys.
Although Cheney had opposed Trump’s first impeachment, she was furious with his actions surrounding the attack on the Capitol, where a violent mob of Trump supporters tried to overturn his election defeat. More than 150 police officers were injured in the rampage.
Cheney was one of just 10 Republicans to support Trump’s impeachment following the riot, and she’s jumped headfirst into her role investigating the tragedy. On Thursday, she used the platform of the televised hearing to warn those Republicans still backing Trump that history won’t treat them kindly.
“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain,” she said.
Supporters of the far-reaching investigation note the significance of having a Republican of Cheney’s stature joining the probe.
“It's important, because like she said, this is not about political parties, or your political views. It's about finding out the truth,” U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell said following the hearing. “And from what the committee laid out today, it seems like there's a lot more that needs to be done.”
But Cheney’s recalcitrance has come with political costs.
Last year, after Cheney refused to stop criticizing Trump for his role in the Capitol riot, the GOP conference voted overwhelmingly to boot her out of leadership, replacing her with a Trump loyalist, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who has embraced the former president's lies about a stolen election.
More recently, the Republican National Committee voted to condemn Cheney — along with the only other Republican on the select committee, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — for their willingness to join Democrats in the Jan. 6 investigation. That decision, the Republican National Committee charged, “has been destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic.”
In the wake of Thursday’s select committee hearing, the attacks on Cheney from Trump’s allies have grown only more pronounced. During the hearing, Tucker Carlson, the wildly popular Fox News pundit, characterized Cheney as “the Iraq War lady” who’s now “lecturing us about honor and truth.”
Carlson’s guest was Joe Kent, a Trump supporter from Washington state who’s launched a primary challenge against Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), who also supported Trump’s second impeachment. He, too, had some sharp words for the Wyoming Republican.
“It's absolutely absurd and insulting,” Kent said of Cheney’s attacks on Trump’s defenders. “She thinks that we can't go back and look at her record that she has been lying to the American people basically for her entire career and profiting off of it, but also she has to bring up this whole, ‘Oh it must be a big Trump thing.’”
Kent said the Capitol rioters were in Washington on Jan. 6 not because of anything Trump did or said, but because “a vast majority” of Americans “did not feel like their voices were heard at the election box, and therefore things started to get a little bit dicey.”
In the face of such attacks, Cheney has found a new group of allies: Democrats, who have always opposed her conservative policy prescriptions, but are now cheering her on as she takes on a shared adversary in Trump.
“Liz Cheney and I do not agree on almost probably 80 percent of the contentious issues that come up, give or take 10 points,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters this week. “But what she is standing up for is the truth.”
“That's why she was removed as the leader of the Republican Party,” he continued. “Because the Republican Party didn't want to hear the truth."