After 18 months of investigation into the deadly attack on the United States Capitol last year, lawmakers who make up the investigative commission vote Monday whether to recommend criminal charges against former President Donald Trump and some of his closest aides.
The House committee interviewed more than a thousand witnesses and held explosive public hearings on what happened on January 6, 2021 and on responsibility for these events.
The panel, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicanswill meet at 1:00 p.m. (local time, 18 GMT) to give their conclusions on the investigation of the deadly riots in which supporters of Trump, who falsely alleges that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him by Joe Biden, violently occupied the Capitol.
The riots left at least five dead and 140 police officers injured. Some 900 people were detained in connection with the violent rampage that reverberated across the country and around the world.
The panel will decide whether or not to recommend that the Department of Justice (DoJ) bring charges against Trumpwho is running to return to the oval office in the 2024 elections, for at least three crimes, according to media reports.
These charges could be for incitement to insurrection, obstruction of official government process, and conspiracy to defraud the United States governmentthe chain reported on Sunday NBCNews.
The representatives cannot authorize charges, but they can recommend doing so to the DoJ, which has already appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Trump’s role in the Capitol riots and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
His vote, largely symbolic, not binding Y the decision will ultimately rest with the attorney general, Merrick Garland.
But the three charges being considered could lead to Trump, who still wields a strong influence in the Republican Party, prison sentences and disqualify him for public office.
“I think the evidence is there, that Donald Trump committed criminal offenses in connection with his efforts to overturn the election,” he told CNN Adam Schiff, former federal prosecutor, Democratic representative and investigative committee member.
The Commission may also make legislative recommendations to protect the election results certification process.
His final report will be published on Wednesday.
“Democrats, Misfits and Bullies”
Schiff offered no details of possible criminal ties to Trump, or what his own vote would look like.
But when referring to the ex-president in the “State of the Union” program of CNNsaid: “I believe the president violated several criminal laws. And I think he has to be treated like any other American who breaks the law, and that’s it, he has to be prosecuted.”.
Trump has repeatedly disparaged the House panel on his own Truth Social platform, calling its members “Democrats, misfits and thugs.”
The former president defends the speech he gave before the riots on January 6 and other of his actions that day as “soft and affectionate.”
That day, he called on his supporters to “fight like crazy.”
“Coup attempt”
Starting in July 2021, the commission investigated Trump’s actions before and during the January 6 appearance of that year.
Through eight hearings, the panel revealed a wealth of evidence that Trump was involved in a complicated series of related plans to nullify the election and that it was impossible for the then-president to be unaware that he had lost the election to Joe Biden. .
Trump was “at the center” of “an attempted coup,” said the head of the committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson.
The panel interviewed a number of Trump aides, including his then-Attorney General Bill Barr, and even his daughter Ivanka. In fragments of the interviews released to the public, many of them said that they never believed that electoral fraud had taken place.
The committee also revealed that Trump lobbied his own vice president, Mike Pence, and other officials in the battleground states of Georgia and Arizona in an intimidation campaign to invalidate the November 2020 election.
(With information from AFP / by Frankie Taggart)
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Source-www.infobae.com