New Brookings Report “Trump On Trial” Is An Essential Companion To The Jan. 6 Hearings And The Question Of Criminality
With the House Jan. 6 Committee about to launch a series of landmark hearings beginning this Thursday, Brookings has published the in-depth report: Trump on Trial: A Guide to the January 6 Committee Hearings and the Question of Criminality, a comprehensive guide to the proceedings.
The 98-page report was authored by Norman Eisen, Donald Ayer, Joshua Perry, Noah Bookbinder, and E. Danya Perry.
The public congressional hearings are part of the House Committee’s investigation of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and the events precipitating it.
“[W]ith a ring of close confidants, Trump conceived and implemented unprecedented schemes to — in his own words — ‘overturn’ the election outcome,” the authors write. “Among the results of this ‘Big Lie’ campaign were the terrible events of January 6, 2021 — an inflection point in what we now understand was nothing less than an attempted coup.”
The issue of criminality is central to the hearings, the authors note.
“The House Jan. 6 Committee is conducting the most important congressional investigation of presidential wrongdoing since the Senate investigation of the Watergate scandals in the 1970s,” Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer said. “The evidence the Committee produces is likely to play a major role in whether the Justice Department proceeds to indict and prosecute former President Trump and his collaborators.
“Trump On Trial is an essential companion to the public hearings – to understanding the full story of what led up to the January 6 insurrection and the criminal laws that may have been broken by Trump and his collaborators and the prosecution that could go forward.”
Federal district court Judge David Carter already has found – in a civil case brought against the Jan. 6 Committee by John Eastman, Trump’s lawyer and a key adviser in his attempted coup – that it was “more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021. […] The illegality of the plan was obvious.”
Trump On Trial covers the House Committee’s work to date, the key players in the attempt to overturn the election, the known facts regarding their conduct that are expected to be covered at the hearings, and the applicable criminal law.
Trump on Trial: A Guide to the January 6 Hearings and the Question of Criminality can be accessed and downloaded here.
