Jan. 6 report: History’s first draft – but with a missing chapter

The Jan. 6 House select committee is set to release its final report on the events leading up to the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol that disrupted Congress’ tallying of the 2020 Electoral College votes, a hallmark of American democracy and key aspect of the peaceful transition of power.

The report marks the culmination of the nine-member panel’s work over the past 18 months, during which it obtained thousands of documents; interviewed hundreds of witnesses, including senior Trump White House advisers and lawyers; and held 10 hearings. The committee provided a heavily footnoted account of former President Donald Trump’s strategy to challenge Joe Biden’s 2020 Electoral College win that will no doubt be studied by historians for decades to come. Its goal? To prevent any similar attacks on American democracy going forward. 

“Our greatest legacy, our most enduring legacy, would be one that is certified by time, which is that we never encounter anything like this again,” says Rep. Jamie Raskin, a constitutional lawyer and Democratic member of the committee.

An initial 161-page summary reflects the summer hearings’ tight focus on the strategy by Mr. Trump and his allies to challenge the 2020 election results. Many, including police officers who were on the front lines that day, have praised the committee for this narrow focus. It made for more compelling storytelling, they say, and an unequivocal stand for moral and political accountability. In its summary, the committee details Mr. Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election results in the courts, by pressuring state legislators and election officials, and finally by pursuing a strategy to disrupt the congressional proceedings on Jan. 6, overriding the objections of White House advisers and lawyers, as well as his own vice president. On Monday, the committee referred Mr. Trump to the Department of Justice for possible charges, including inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstruction of an official proceeding.

Sgt. Aquilino Gonnell, who testified at the first Jan. 6 hearing and has attended every subsequent hearing, says he believes the former president is guilty. 

“He left me and my fellow officers for more than three hours and at the Capitol fighting for our lives, 16 blocks away while he was watching TV,” says Sergeant Gonnell, whose career was cut short due to the injury and trauma he suffered as a result of the riot. He says he hopes the Justice Department will avail itself of the evidence amassed by the committee.

But some say it was an oversight not to also examine holes in the defense that left the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) unprepared to thwart the masses of rioters who broke into the citadel of American democracy on Jan. 6, 2021. Some were hoping to see more of that in the final report, but the initial summary gave little indication that it would delve into why Capitol Police did not share intelligence warnings they received and plan accordingly.

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

A committee staffer gathers nameplates of members after the conclusion of the final public meeting of the U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Dec. 19, 2022.

“I was really disappointed that the Jan. 6 select committee didn’t dive into any of that and dissect the leadership failures of the USCP in any of their hearings,” says Gus Papathanasiou, a Capitol Police officer who chairs the USCP labor union.

Anything new since the hearings?

The contours of the initial summary largely mirror those of the summer hearings, with a few exceptions.

The main new material regards the nonbinding referrals of Mr. Trump and his lawyer John Eastman to the Justice Department for criminal charges, and a handful of GOP lawmakers to the House Ethics Committee for failing to comply with the committee’s subpoena requests.

“Ours is not a system of justice where the foot soldiers go to jail and the masters and ringleaders get a free pass,” said Representative Raskin, who detailed the committee’s justification for the referrals based on the gravity, centrality, and severity of Mr. Trump’s actions.

A key theme is that Mr. Trump knowingly peddled a lie to his followers for his own political benefit, raising roughly a quarter billion dollars while doing so. A side-by-side comparison details 18 instances between the election and Jan. 6 in which Mr. Trump’s inner circle would debunk a specific election fraud claim only for the president to repeat it days later. The summary also provides a detailed ticktock of the meetings leading up to Jan. 6, in which Mr. Trump grew increasingly frustrated with his inner circle and eventually turned on his vice president, who was overseeing the joint session of Congress that began just as Mr. Trump concluded his speech to supporters gathered near the National Mall.  

One notable omission was White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson’s secondhand account of the president, upon leaving the rally and being told he couldn’t join the protesters at the Capitol, lunging for the neck of one of his Secret Service agents. Her recounting of that episode was one of the most dramatic pieces of testimony this summer. The summary cited numerous sources saying the president was angry, but did not repeat the claim of physical aggression. 

Addressing criticisms

The committee devoted a section to establishing the credibility of witnesses central to its case, including Ms. Hutchinson. The committee also raised questions about the veracity and completeness of several others’ testimony, as well as concerns about efforts by the former president’s allies to pressure witnesses to withhold incriminating information, including with financial incentives.

Amid criticism that the hearings did not address Capitol security failures, the summary included a section on intelligence warnings received prior to Jan. 6 that made clear that protesters were targeting the Capitol, were planning to get inside to disrupt the proceedings, and were willing to use violence – even at the cost of losing their own lives. 

After Mr. Trump urged his followers in a Dec. 19 tweet to join a big protest on Jan. 6 – “Be there, will be wild!” – supporters described it online as a “1776 moment” that called for a patriotic stand against tyranny.

“We get our President or we die,” read one online thread quoted by the FBI field office in Norfolk, Virginia, in a Jan. 5 alert to law enforcement agencies.

The report credited intelligence agencies with detecting this planning and sharing it with the White House and the Secret Service, and also noted that Capitol Police had received at least some warnings. It did not, however, examine why those warnings were not more broadly shared and acted upon. Instead, the main fault it found with intelligence and law enforcement entities was not collecting intelligence on Mr. Trump’s plans for Jan. 6, which struck some as an odd twist.

“I read that and I was just absolutely flabbergasted because some components of these agencies did collect information, but broadly speaking, they did not act,” says Quinta Jurecic, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

The glossing over of systemic failures within intelligence and law enforcement detracts from the committee’s otherwise incredible work, she has written and reiterated in the interview. But, she adds, “it blows way past just not addressing it, in favor of – I would argue – contorting the facts and presenting the issue in a misleading manner in order to further point the finger at Trump.”

This redirect toward the president may reflect internal divisions within the committee, reported earlier this month by The Washington Post, over how much to focus on Mr. Trump to the exclusion of other issues. The committee’s release of the 161-page summary detailing the case against the former president may have been a compromise, putting the early attention on Mr. Trump with other aspects being included in the full report.

Lastly, the summary addressed criticisms that the committee was politically biased, detailing the process that led to the formation of a nine-person committee with only two Republicans – both vocal Trump critics. In early 2021, Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s conditions for a bipartisan commission, including equal representation for Democrats and Republicans, but he opposed it at the 11th hour and Senate Republicans blocked it. Speaker Pelosi then formed a House select committee under different terms, and rejected two of the five nominees put forward by Leader McCarthy, who then rescinded the other three.

The committee has touted its bipartisan cooperation. Listing the witnesses, the report notes that all but one who have a political affiliation are Republican. Still, many other Republicans say the lack of alternative perspectives undermined the committee’s credibility and kept it from investigating serious issues, including why Capitol Police weren’t properly equipped, trained, or informed of the intelligence warnings.

“Those are the issues that deserve a lot more attention,” says GOP Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, who would have been the top-ranking Republican on the Jan. 6 select committee if not vetoed by Speaker Pelosi.

Instead, he spearheaded a report on Capitol security that will outline recommendations to be implemented by House Republicans when they take control of the chamber next month, just ahead of the two-year anniversary of the Capitol attack.

Ms. Jurecic of Brookings says it’s unfortunate that the committee’s lack of attention to such issues allows Republicans to make political hay and undercut the credibility of the rest of the report. 

“It just seems like a huge unforced error,” she says, adding that she hopes to see more in the final report.