The Jan. 6 select committee’s final report will begin with a voluminous executive summary describing former President Donald Trump’s culpability for his extensive and baseless effort to subvert the 2020 election, according to people briefed on its contents.
Drafts of the report, which the people briefed say have been circulating among committee members for weeks, include thousands of footnotes drawn from the panel’s interviews and research over the past 16 months into Trump’s activities in the frenzied final weeks that preceded Jan. 6, 2021 — when a mob of his supporters battered police and stormed the Capitol.
The committee members are expected to formally approve the report at a Dec. 21 public meeting of the panel described by Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). Lawmakers will be able to propose final edits before the draft is expected to be sent to the Government Publishing Office for printing later this week.
The final report, according to those briefed on it, will have eight chapters that align closely with the evidence the panel unveiled during its public hearings in June and July:
- Trump’s effort to sow distrust in the results of the election
- Trump’s pressure on state governments or legislatures to overturn victories by Joe Biden
- Trump campaign efforts to send pro-Trump electors to Washington from states won by Biden
- Trump’s push to deploy the Justice Department in service of his election scheme
- The pressure campaign by Trump and his lawyers against then-Vice President Mike Pence
- Trump’s effort to summon supporters to Washington who later fueled the Jan. 6 mob
- The 187 minutes during which Trump refused to tell rioters to leave the Capitol
- An analysis of the attack on the Capitol
A person familiar with the drafting of the report emphasized that the report itself may not be limited to an executive summary and the eight chapters and is also expected to include appendices that capture more aspects of the committee’s investigation. The complete report is expected to include investigative findings from all of the select committee’s five investigative teams, which probed Trump’s actions, the mob, the role of extremism in the attack, the money trail behind Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and law enforcement failures on Jan. 6.