The FINAL and AUTHORITATIVE report from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, detailing evidence of treason, collusion, and conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election by Trump allied Oath Keepers and other conspirators. Never before seen evidence outlines a far-ranging conspiracy the likes of which this country has not seen since the Civil War.
Americans must read this. As an academic librarian and professional historian specializing in the post-war period of American history, I've been through a lot of government documents. Most are dry or so specialized that it takes real effort to plow through them. Not this one. Some of my take-aways. It is striking that the witnesses were entirely Trump administration officials and Capitol-attack participants, both speaking from personal knowledge--not hearsay, not tenuous inferences linking sparse evidence; they had been directly involved. Personally, I have never seen a more thorough job of primary research or documentation and few presentations of evidence stitched together more effectively.
The conclusions are chilling. +The narrative about a stolen election was known by those who pushed it to be entirely fictive, but it became a tactic nonetheless deliberately chosen, set up and run months before the election. +The system inside the White House worked, but it didn't matter: a sitting President was given hard evidence and good advice by well-qualified counsel, and yet dismissed all of it to follow threadbare speculations by unqualified people who told him what he wanted to hear. +Participants in the plot included elected Representatives still sitting and now in leadership positions within the current Congress. +For the first time in its history, the United States endured a orchestrated coup d'etat attempt, like some third-world dictatorship. There is no other way to characterize the story. A sitting U.S. President actually attempted to take over the government.
Lest anyone argue that the Select Committee was itself a political stunt, see pp.128-130, which summarizes how one coup plotter attempted to install a fellow plotter and a sympathizer into Select Committee membership. If a reader wants to cut to the chase, read the Executive Summary, Referrals sections I-VII, pp.98-113. This is purely a Constitutional matter.
This book contain even more data than the public hearings offered about a very sad chapter in our nation's history: the rioters storming the U.S. Capitol at the instigation of President Trump. The bi-partisan panel clearly notes the criminal behavior of the most corrupt president in U.S. history; after Nixon, that's saying something, and that something is not good for our democracy. This book should be required reading for every high school and college in the nation.
I read the muller report, the Ukraine phone call transcript (along with all the depositions leading up to the impeachment which were never listened to by the actual senate because they literally refused to look at any evidence), and now this. How can anyone still support this man? Why is almost every Republican presidential candidate promising to pardon Trump if they get elected? The evidence of so many crimes is so overwhelming, and yet millions still believe his constant lies.