The panel of the United States Congress that investigates the assault on the capitol On January 6, 2021, it approved this Thursday to summon former President Donald Trump to testify.
The decision followed a vote held at the end of what was, in principle, the commission’s last public hearing, in which all nine lawmakers on the panel voted in favor of the subpoena.
Today’s session focused on the then president’s knowledge of the coming incidents and how, far from trying to prevent them, he instigated them.
Trump “is the person at the center of the narrative of what happened on January 6. That is why we want to hear his own account, ”explained Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, at the head of the Congressional panel, which has interviewed more than a thousand witnesses and reviewed some 1,400 documents in more than a year.
“We have an obligation to seek answers directly from the person who set this all in motion, and every American has a right to get answers,” argued Republican Rep. Liz Cheney. “We must defend our republic.”
The exmandatario resorted to social networks to question the legitimacy of the commission and question the moment chosen by it to summon him.
“Why have they waited until the very end, until the very last moment of their last meeting? Because the commission is a ‘failure’ that has barely served to divide the country,” Trump argued.
The unprecedented attack on the US Capitol left more than a hundred police officers injured. Officially, more than five deaths have been recorded, including that of an assailant who was fatally shot while trying to scale a door and that of the Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick, died after suffering two strokes.
Hundreds of people have been arrested all over the US in relation to the attack and several have been convicted of crimes of sedition.
Created in July 2021, the panel is made up of a Democratic majority, although it includes two Republicans, Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who are highly critical of Trump. During its work, the committee has focused on the then president and the far-right group Proud Boys. During the sessions, unpublished images and videos taken on the day of the assault were shown.
“President Trump called the mob, brought the mob together, and lit the flame for this attack,” Cheney, who was chosen as the panel’s vice chair, said in the opening remarks.
the last hearing
At its final public hearing, unless Trump agrees to testify, the committee showed a collection of videos of chaos in the Capitol 21 months ago and snippets of testimony from Trump advisers who they told him repeatedly that he had lost re-election and that any irregularities that might have occurred in the voting or the counting of votes were not enough to change the result.
The committee noted that the Trump circle failed in 61 of the 62 legal proceedings it embarked on; always in states where he narrowly lost to Joe Biden, and that the one case was of no consequence to the national outcome.
The committee maintains that Trump had a premeditated plan to declare victory on election night November 3, 2020, whether you win or lose, what did he do in the white house in the early hours of November 4, even though the election result was in doubt at the time.
Thursday’s hearing took place less than a month before the November 8 legislative elections, in which the Democrats’ tight political control of Congress is at stake, and two years before the 2024 presidential election. , with Trump, a Republican, indicating he is likely to mount a new White House race against Biden.
The House investigative committee does not have the power to bring criminal charges against Trump, but it could refer a criminal case to the Justice Department in a final report it hopes to complete before the end of the year. If Republicans manage to take control of the House starting in January, they will almost certainly disband the committee.
Trump’s subpoena could easily delay the committee’s efforts to close the investigation by December.
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