Some folks at Politico seem to have information about drafts of the January 6 select committee's soon- to- be- released report. Here's their peek:
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. [snip]
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.
Here's the caveat:
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. (our emphasis)
Clearly, the tipoff here is the prevalence of the name "Trump." That would seem to support what has been rumored recently -- that Rep. Liz Cheney wanted the primary focus to be on the Malignant Loser. We, along with millions of others, hope that that focus isn't to the exclusion of the many (self-) important players who helped plan and execute the unsuccessful coup on January 6.
Regarding criminal referrals to the Justice Department:
Still uncertain is the committee’s decision regarding potential criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Trump himself or for any of his associates who aided his effort to seize a second term he didn’t win. It’s also unclear whether the panel made any decisions about potential referrals during its Sunday meeting, although members said the discussion would be on the agenda.
The panel is unlikely to formally vote on criminal referrals until its Dec. 21 meeting. However, a Trump referral for attempting to disrupt the transfer of power is seen as likely, given the panel’s court filings in the Eastman case.
We've been hearing that the most likely coup participants to be referred in addition to the Malignant Loser are his "attorneys" John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, and his chief of staff Mark Meadows. Regardless, it appears that the Justice Department's Special Counsel Jack Smith is well along in pursuing several criminal investigations involving the Malignant Loser, primarily the January 6 coup and the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago cases.
UPDATE: If you haven't seen the "Meadows Texts" and analysis being published by TPM, get over there! They demonstrate the links between the Malignant Loser's chief of staff Mark Meadows and a slew of mouth- foaming Republican Congresscranks in the January 6 coup plot.
