11 Details You May Have Missed in the January 6 Report

The Secret Service agents surrounding the Vice President thought they were about to be in a fight to the death to protect the man next in line for president. When Vice President Richard Nixon's motorcade was attacked in Venezuela in 1959 it was seen as the "most violent attack ever perpetrated" and I can't think of a similar fear in the past.

There are four. There are still big unknowns.

Some important holes in the committee's knowledge were caused by the fact that more than 30 witnesses invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. According to the report, the Committee has a lot of concerns about potential efforts to obstruct its investigation, including by certain counsel who may have advised clients to give false or misleading testimony to the Committee. It will be interesting to see if any Justice Department indictments and investigations will uncover the truth about the White House.

There are five. Every level of government officials involved in counting and certifying elections were targeted by parts of Trump's plan.

One of the most tragic hearings from the January 6 Committee focused on the human toll of President Trump unleashing reckless personal attacks on the relatively anonymous local and state officials in battleground states who were charged with counting and certifying the votes. The final report contains a lot of information about the terrible rhetoric that Trump directed his supporters to unleash on officials in places like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia.

Adrian Fontes testified before Congress that he moved his children out of the family home at least once for three days because of the threats, and that his family had go-bags packed in case they needed to flee. In Michigan, after Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield resisted Trump's entreaties to overturn the state's results, Trump or his team made fun of their cell phone numbers. The committee said that the threats from Trump and other supporters were un-American and beyond the pale.

The report contains new information about the Trump campaign's attempts to create and forward to the National Archives and Congress slate of fake electors, people who would vote for Trump rather than Biden, as their states had properly certified. One of the interesting questions left after the January 6 report is whether state attorneys general or local prosecutors in any state will look at the evidence for potential criminal charges.

There are six. Trump is exposed to legal and criminal risks.

The final report shows that federal judge David Carter concluded as part of the court fight over the committee's work that President Trump likely violated two criminal statutes. There is a lot of evidence of corrupt acts and knowledge that Trump was acting corruptly because White House aides, lawyers, and campaign officials kept telling him. The committee wrote that the president made corrupt, dishonest, and unlawful choices.

There are seven. There was a close call for the Justice Department.

My eyes were wide open as I read the sections about how Trump tried to install Jeffrey Clark as acting Attorney General. In January 2021, acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue will take over the department. The two confronted Trump as he tried to install Clark, who was willing to sign a letter saying DOJ had doubts about the election. The letter may have spiraled us into a constitutional crisis, and White House counsel Pat Cipollone said it was a murder suicide pact.

While Trump persisted, he was told that all of the other assistant attorneys general would resign if he pushed the change, but the committee's work found that even as the showdown unfolded, "contemporaneous White House documents suggest that Clark had already been appointed as" Clark would be here by himself with a hostile building, those people who remained, and nothing would get done. Clark was going to lead a graveyard. The plan was dropped after Trump said it wasn't going to be worth it.

There are eight. Bad stuff could happen on January 6 and the US government failed to act.

The second sentence of the executive summary states that the central cause of January 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump. He was the one who made the events of January 6 happen. The committee report shows that the US government, both its security agencies and top White House staff failed to act on warnings that armed, violent individuals were coming to Washington on January 6.

Gen. Mark Milley remembers deputy secretary of defense David Norquist saying on a National Security Council call, "the greatest threat is a direct assault on the Capitol." Milley said he would never forget it. On Christmas Eve, the Secret Service was warned in a document titled "Armed and Ready, Mr. President" that included a description of worrisome social media posts. The Capitol Police were warned by both civilians and the Secret Service on December 29th. On January 5, the FBI issued a DC-area intelligence bulletin that warned of the potential for violence in Washington, D.C. Maps of the Capitol were posted to a pro- Trump website. There was more to come.