After referring Trump for charges, the Jan. 6 panel is set to release its full report
Nearly two years after the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the Democratic-led House committee investigating the attack is set to release its full report Wednesday afternoon.
The report's release would come two days after panel members held their final business hearing Monday, where they referred former President Donald Trump to the Department of Justice on four criminal charges, including assisting, aiding or comforting those involved in an insurrection.
The committee also referred four Republican House members — Kevin McCarthy of California, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona — to the House Ethics Committee for failure to comply with subpoenas.
A summary of the report was also released Monday, which includes the panel's key findings an evidence related to the criminal referrals.
What else will come out in the full report?
The full report, which is expected to be eight chapters long, will include additional evidence, along with detailed descriptions of the scheme pushed by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results. It will also have citations from the more than 1,000 interviews the committee members conducted over the course of their 18-month investigation.
But Wednesday's expected release won't be the last we hear from the panel.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chairs the committee, told reporters that transcripts of non-sensitive interviews they conducted will be released between now and the end of the year, when the panel officially sunsets.
What happens now that the committee has finished its investigation?
The committee referred Trump to the Department of Justice on four charges: obstruction of an official proceeding; conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to make a false statement; and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. by assisting, aiding or comforting those involved in an insurrection.
Whether the Justice Department will take any action is unclear. Since Trump announced another run for the presidency, the DOJ appointed special counsel Jack Smith to lead the department's investigations into the former president.
Whether the committee's referrals of House members to the ethics committee will move forward is also unclear — though it's likely they hit a wall as Republicans are set to take control of the House in the new year.
In a statement released Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., praised the committee's work, but did not outline what she sees as the next steps for the referrals of the four House members.
"The Committee has reached important conclusions about the evidence it has developed, and I respect those findings. Our Founders made clear that, in the United States of America, no one is above the law. This bedrock principle remains unequivocally true, and justice must be done," Pelosi said.
One thing to watch, though, is the legislative recommendations in the report for measures Congress can enact to help avoid another Jan. 6 riot.
A bill updating the Electoral Count Act has bipartisan backing and has been attached to the omnibus spending bill moving through Congress in the coming days. [Copyright 2022 NPR]
