US: House committee to further dissect Trump’s actions during the Capitol attack
He was doing nothing to actually stop the riot" despite "his advisers urging him continuously to take action, to take more action".
Washington: The House committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol, by Donald Trump supporters, will wrap up its public hearings on Thursday, and will dissect the former president’s actions on the day of the incident, Khaleej Times reported.
Congresswoman Elaine Luria, a member of a panel comprising the seven Democrats and two Republicans who had voted to impeach Trump after the violent insurrection of January 6, 2021, said “He was doing nothing to actually stop the riot” despite “his advisers urging him continuously to take action, to take more action”.
Luria further said that the committee would examine Trump’s actions “minute by minute”, starting with a fiery speech made to his supporters near the White House (in which he claimed that the November 2020 election was stolen), to when he finally told the rioters that they were “very special”, but it was time to go home.
Liz Cheney, the Republican Vice Chair of the committee, explained that the panel will present evidence that “Donald Trump never picked up the phone that day to order his administration to help… For multiple hours, Donald Trump refused to intervene to stop it.”
The panel has also subpoenaed numerous advisors and aides to Trump, as it seeks to determine if either the former president, or his associates, had a role in planning/encouraging his supporters to prevent the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.
Thursday’s two-hour hearing in Washington, the committee’s eighth, is expected to be the last one this summer, although the committee has not ruled out further sessions.
The House committee is expected to submit a report to Congress this fall with its findings.
The committee may issue criminal referrals to the Justice Department, leaving it up to Attorney General Merrick Garland to decide whether Trump or others should be prosecuted for the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He told reporters on Wednesday that the January 6 probe is the “most important” investigation that the Justice Department has ever conducted, and stressed that “no one is above the law in this country.”
