U.S. Capitol riot committee delays releasing final report on assault by Trump backers

5:23 pm Wednesday, December 21st, 2022

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The congressional panel probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol said on Wednesday it would delay by at least one day the release of its final report outlining the case that former President Donald Trump should face criminal charges of inciting the deadly riot.

The House of Representatives Select Committee said it expected to release its report on Thursday.

The report, to be issued online, is expected to be more than 1,000 pages long, based on nearly 1,200 interviews over 18 months and hundreds of thousands of documents, as well as the rulings of more than 60 federal and state courts.

The report lists 17 specific findings, discusses the legal implications of actions by Trump and some of his associates and includes criminal referrals to the Justice Department of Trump and other individuals, according to an executive summary released on Monday. The report also identifies legislative recommendations to help avert another such attack.

On Monday, the committee asked federal prosecutors to charge the Republican former president with four crimes, including obstruction and insurrection, for efforts to overturn results of the November 2020 election and sparking the attack on the seat of government.

“Rather than honor his constitutional obligation to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’ President Trump instead plotted to overturn the election outcome,” the House panel said in the 160-page summary of the report.

Trump gave a fiery speech to his supporters near the White House the morning of Jan. 6, and publicly chastised his vice president, Mike Pence, for not going along with his scheme to reject ballots cast for Democrat Joe Biden. Trump then waited hours to make a public statement as thousands of his supporters raged through the Capitol, assaulting police and threatening to hang Pence.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Scott Malone, Cynthia Osterman, Alison Williams and Jonathan Oatis)