Key member of Jan. 6 committee on recommendation of charges against Trump

Judy Woodruff:

Late today, the January 6 Committee released transcripts of nearly three dozen of the more than 1,000 interviews they conducted during the 18-month-long investigation into the Capitol attack and President Trump's role.

The congressional committee will be releasing its final report tomorrow.

Geoff Bennett has more.

Geoff Bennett:

Judy, the report's release tomorrow comes after committee members held their final business hearing, where they referred former President Donald Trump to the Department of Justice on four criminal charges, obstructing an official proceeding, making false statements, defrauding the U.S., and inciting an insurrection.

Joining us to discuss what we can expect in the full report is January 6 Committee member Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin.

It's good to have you with us.

And, Congressman, we expected the full report to be released today. We learned late in the day that it's actually coming tomorrow. What accounts for the delay?

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD):

I believe that there were printing issues at the government printing office. And so it got pushed into the evening. And we decided to just wait until tomorrow, early in the day.

Geoff Bennett:

So, when that full report does arrive, how will it, to include the transcripts, all of the witness interviews, all of the underlying evidence gathered by your committee over the last 18 months, how will that full report expand the public knowledge, the public understanding of what transpired on January 6, and who ultimately bears responsibility?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Well, it will supply a lot of details and a lot of color to the basic elements of the story that the public, I think, already understands.

We have a president of the United States who refused to take no for an answer from the American people, who gave more than seven million more votes to Joe Biden than they did to Donald Trump. It was 306 to 232 in the Electoral College, the same margin that Trump had defeated Hillary by in 2016, which Trump had declared an absolute landslide.

But he wasn't going to take no for an answer. And so he began a multipronged assault on the election. He tried to get the legislators to overturn it. So, the whole story is told in detail in our report. That doesn't mean we got everything because there were a bunch of people who blew off their subpoenas or came in and took the Fifth Amendment.

But we certainly understand every basic element of the assault on democracy and how 150 of our officers came to be wounded and injured by the mob that Donald Trump whipped up on the Ellipse.

Geoff Bennett:

A question about information-sharing, because the Justice Department has been conducting its own wide-ranging investigation into the insurrection and the efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the election.

The January 6 Committee is now sharing evidence with federal prosecutors who, for months, were critical of the panel for refusing to send over witness interview transcripts and other information. Why not share that information earlier in the process?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Well, look, we were working on our own investigation. And these things are enormously time-consuming, and our staff was overburdened and staggering under the weight of the work as it was.

So, we have gotten to the end. We have made it clear we were going to turn over to the Department of Justice all relevant information that they're seeking. And, indeed, we want the whole public to be able to see exactly what we have learned from this bipartisan inquiry into the worst violent domestic assault on the peaceful transfer of power and Congress and the vice president in our history.

Geoff Bennett:

As you mentioned, the January 6 Committee referred four members of Congress, all Republicans, to the House Ethics Committee for ignoring congressional subpoenas.

The Ethics Committee is unique, in that the membership is evenly divided between each political party, an equal number of Republicans and Democrats. Still, Republicans are set to take control of the House in a couple of weeks' time.

Do you expect this committee to operate in a nonpartisan fashion regarding these referrals?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Well, no, I wouldn't expect them to operate in a nonpartisan fashion. I would expect them to operate in a bipartisan fashion, because I'm realistic about that.

But I do think that there's a profound problem that is posed by members of Congress who receive a congressional subpoena to come and to give information and to testify about what they know who just blow it off and refuse to do that. That's a very serious problem.

Congress issues subpoenas, and we expect people to comply with them, under the rule of law. What does it do to the credibility of Congress and our ability to enforce our own subpoenas if we have members of Congress who don't even respect that process enough to show up and at least to assert some kind of legal immunity or constitutional privilege, if they think they have got it?

Geoff Bennett:

Lastly, the executive summary of the committee's final report, the executive summary that came out this past week, it doesn't address questions of why the FBI, why U.S. Capitol Police and other law enforcement agencies didn't do more to increase security on that day.

Will we get more clarity on that issue when the final report comes out?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Yes, the final report has a lot more detail and analysis of different things that people said about that.

There clearly was information coming in through different law enforcement and intelligence channels that there was — that there were going to be large numbers of people coming to Washington, and many of them on the extremist Web sites were saying that they wanted to storm the Capitol or attack the Capitol or attack officers and so on.

And, of course, the president of the United States, ultimately, is the chief of the executive branch of government, but he had no interest in defending us in this case, as we saw on January 6 itself, when the riot was actually under way, the attack on his own vice president and members of Congress was under way, and he did nothing. He didn't get in touch with the FBI. He didn't get in touch with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He didn't get in touch with the police and so on.

So, clearly, he wasn't doing anything before that. And then other different individuals did different things. And we discuss it. But, overall, it was simply not up to the task of dealing with the size of the crowd, the mob that came to attack the Capitol, as incited by Donald Trump.

And so that — that's a serious problem that we will have to look at. None of that absolves or exonerates Donald Trump in any way of what he did, because he was the one who unleashed the whole sequence of events. He called for the rally right at the exact same time Congress was meeting in the joint session under the 12th Amendment.

He urged everybody to come for a wild protest and became the first president in American history to try to assemble a crowd, quickly to become a mob, to attack the peaceful transfer of power.

So, he's the one who's responsible for it. It's like a bank robbery where you have got a mastermind of a bank robbery take place, and the bank is robbed, and then you ask questions afterwards about, well, were there people who were somehow cooperating with it, or were there people who should have done something differently? How could we fortify ourselves in the future?

All those are legitimate questions, but none of them absolve Donald Trump of his central culpability in this matter.

Geoff Bennett:

Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, member of the January 6 Congressional Committee, thanks, as always, for your time.

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

You bet.