Jan. 6 committee delays release of final report, now anticipating Thursday release

House Republicans released a report Wednesday focused on security failures at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, highlighting well-documented breakdowns in intelligence sharing, Capitol security and coordination between various law enforcement agencies that responded that day.

Their primary recommendation centers around reforming the Capitol Police Board and bolstering congressional oversight of the Capitol police force – two issues that were identified by lawmakers of both parties in the wake of Jan. 6.

But the GOP report is silent on other efforts to disrupt the transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election and selective in its criticism of political leaders and their culpability in the security breakdowns on Jan. 6. The report resurfaces largely unfounded allegations to cast blame on Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi while glossing over former President Donald Trump’s own role.  

Republicans cast the report as a rebuttal to the House select committee’s investigation into Jan. 6 as they are set to take control of the chamber and endeavor to take back the narrative. Republican lawmakers have said the security failures are paramount and that the select committee overstepped its mandate in its 17-month probe.

The Democrat-led select committee had planned to release its final report on Wednesday but has delayed the rollout until Thursday. An executive summary released on Monday lays blame for the insurrection squarely on Trump.

More on the report: The GOP report comes from the five Republicans who Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy initially appointed to serve on the select committee before deciding members of his party would not participate.

It includes a timeline of events that occurred on Jan. 6, making no mention of the fact that Trump waited hours before calling on the rioters to leave the US Capitol that day and omitting incendiary remarks he made at the rally preceding the attack. 

Instead, the report paints Trump as only encouraging his supporters at the White House Ellipse to march to the US Capitol and demonstrate “peacefully,” noticeably omitting other parts of the speech, including when he encouraged rally goers to “fight light hell.”

Similarly, the timeline includes a tweet Trump sent after the Capitol had been breached, saying: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!” 

Missing from the report is Trump’s tweet in which he eventually told the rioters to leave the Capitol – several hours after the deadly riot began.

The select committee has revealed witness testimony from several former White House officials saying Trump repeatedly refused to call off the rioters despite being asked to do so by a number of his closest advisers.

The GOP report also doesn’t address Trump’s claim that he issued a directive prior to Jan. 6 to deploy thousands of National Guard troops to the Capitol that day.

Trump’s former Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, in an interview with the select committee, denied Trump gave him formal orders authorizing the deployment of National Guard troops to the Capitol on Jan. 6.

In an updated guidance, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol said it “now anticipates its final report will be filed and released tomorrow.”

The committee also said the release of other records is possible today.

The panel originally said the report would be released Wednesday.

Members of the House select committee have been investigating what happened before, after and during the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. Now they are getting ready to present their findings in a final report expected to be released Wednesday.

The committee is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans. It was formed after efforts to create an independent 9/11-style commission failed. 

Rep. Liz Cheney is one of two Republicans on the panel appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled all five of his selections because Pelosi would not accept two of his picks. In July 2021, Pelosi invited GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois to join the committee, making him the second GOP lawmaker to sit on the committee. 

Here’s who is on the panel:

Democrats: 

Republicans 

The final report the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack is set to release Wednesday launches a new era for criminal investigators, politicians, and members of the public who have been eager to see the nuts and bolts of its work.

Here’s what to watch for:

Detail on possible obstruction of the investigation

In the summary of its report released earlier this week, the panel revealed it is aware of “multiple efforts by President Donald Trump to contact Select Committee witnesses,” adding that DOJ is aware “of at least one of those circumstances.”

The summary released Monday also claimed the panel has a “range of evidence suggesting specific efforts to obstruct the Committee’s investigation.” That includes concerns that attorneys paid by Trump’s political committee or allied groups “have specific incentives to defend President Trump rather than zealously represent their own clients.”

Details of Trump’s effort to visit the Capitol

The summary details that the panel was ultimately unable to get former White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato to corroborate a bombshell moment during the public hearings, in which Hutchinson recalled Ornato describing Trump’s altercation with the head of his security detail when he was told he would not be taken to the Capitol following his speech on the Ellipse.

The committee summary said both Hutchinson and a White House employee testified to the panel about the Ornato conversation. But “Ornato professed that he did not recall either communication, and that he had no knowledge at all about the President’s anger.”

The committee wrote that it “has significant concerns about the credibility of this testimony” and vowed to release his transcript publicly.

Fundraising efforts

In terms of financing after the 2020 presidential election and through the Jan. 6 rallies, the committee says it gathered evidence indicating that Trump “raised roughly one quarter of a billion dollars in fundraising efforts between the election and January 6th.”

“Those solicitations persistently claimed and referred to election fraud that did not exist,” the panel wrote.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, has said the panel has evidence that members of the Trump family and inner circle – including Kimberly Guilfoyle – personally benefited from money that was raised based on the former president’s false election claims, but the panel has never gone as far to say a financial crime has been committed.

Read more on what to watch for here.

The Jan. 6 committee made a startling allegation on Monday, claiming it had evidence that a Trump-backed attorney urged a key witness to mislead the committee about details they recalled. In the executive summary of the final report, the committee revisited the issue in its handoff of the investigation to the Justice Department.

According to the report, “the lawyer had advised the witness that the witness could, in certain circumstances, tell the Committee that she did not recall facts when she actually did recall them.” The committee declined to identify the people.

What we know: However, CNN has learned that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the Trump White House, is the lawyer who allegedly advised his then-client, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did, sources familiar with the committee’s work tell CNN. Before her public testimony, Hutchinson dropped Passantino and got a new lawyer.

Trump’s Save America political action committee funded Passantino and his law firm Elections LLC, including paying for his representation of Hutchinson, other sources tell CNN. The committee report notes the lawyer did not tell his client who was paying for the legal services.

In a statement to CNN, Passantino said he didn’t advise Hutchinson to mislead the committee. “I represented Ms. Hutchinson honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me. I believed Ms. Hutchinson was being truthful and cooperative with the Committee throughout the several interview sessions in which I represented her.”

Passantino pointed out it’s not uncommon for people to change lawyers “because their interests or strategies change,” according to his statement. He also said political committees sometimes cover client fees “at the client’s request.”

By Tuesday, Passantino’s professional biography had been removed from the website of a midwestern-based law firm where he was a partner – and he acknowledged in his statement he was on a leave of absence from the firm “given the distraction of this matter.” He remains a partner at Elections LLC.

Lawyers must follow extensive ethics guidelines as part of their profession, including avoiding conflicts of interest that could compromise their representation of a client. According to legal ethics experts, a lawyer swaying their client’s testimony in a way that wouldn’t be entirely truthful could be looked at as possible obstruction of an investigation.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection has started handing over evidence — documents and transcripts — to the Justice Department in the last week, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Special Counsel Jack Smith had sent a letter to the committee on Dec. 5, requesting all of the information from the panel’s investigation, another source told CNN.

The information transfer focuses specifically on former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s former election lawyer John Eastman, the source added. The DOJ also received Meadows text messages from the committee.

The panel also has started to share transcripts of witness interviews pertaining to the false slates of electors and the pressure campaign by the former president and his allies on certain states to overturn the 2020 election results.

“We’ve actually given some transcripts to the Department of Justice during the last month,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the select committee, told CNN Monday.

The committee also is slated to release its full final report today.

Spokespersons for the committee and for the special counsel did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

The final report from the House select committee investigating Jan. 6, 2021, will include information about Republican National Committee fundraising directly after the 2020 presidential election, what Secret Service knew ahead of the attack and the response by the National Guard, committee member Rep. Pete Aguilar said earlier this month.

The comments from Aguilar expand on themes the committee has presented in its previous hearings and detail to a new level what is expected to appear in the final report. Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who chairs the committee, has previously told CNN the panel’s final report will contain eight chapters.

Some information in the report will be redacted due to security concerns, according to Aguilar.

He added that “there have been some conversations with people who came before us, where we indicated we would redact some small pieces,” such as current workplaces, that are important to protect.

With its mic drop finale, the House committee investigating the US Capitol insurrection left a fateful question hanging over Washington, Donald Trump and the 2024 presidential campaign: will the ex-president be charged with a crime?

The committee announced in its final public meeting on Monday it was recommending to the Justice Department that Trump be prosecuted on at least four charges, carefully matching the panel’s catalog of violence, lies, insurrection and dereliction of duty up to and on January 6, 2021, with specific legal statutes.

Yet the panel, despite delivering what it called a “roadmap to justice,” has no power to try Trump and its decisions are not binding on the Justice Department.

The DOJ has its own investigation and faces prosecutorial decisions that require a higher bar than the committee’s political gambits. The potential charges concerned also have little case law precedent.

And while both Attorney General Merrick Garland and the House committee have long argued that every American should be subject to equal justice, the gravity of indicting an ex-president and current White House candidate who has already used violence as a political tool means the department’s dilemma is among the most fateful in American history.

More broadly, the committee has now sketched the most urgent framing of a perennial question about Trump’s riotous careers in business and politics: Will he ever face accountability for his rule-breaking conduct?

The question is especially acute given that the norm crushed this time almost toppled US democracy.

Read the full analysis here.

For months, the Jan. 6 committee went back-and-forth over whether it would refer former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. On Monday, the committee didn’t equivocate.

The committee referred Trump to the DOJ on at least four criminal charges, including:

The panel said in its executive summary that it had evidence of possible charges of conspiring to injure or impede an officer and seditious conspiracy.

So what is a criminal referral? A referral represents a recommendation that the Justice Department investigate and look at charging the individuals in question. The House committee’s final report – to be released Wednesday – will provide justification from the panel’s investigation for recommending the charges.

In practice, the referral is effectively a symbolic measure. It does not require the Justice Department to act, and regardless, Attorney General Merrick Garland has already appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to take on two investigations related to Trump, including the Jan. 6 investigation.

But the formal criminal referrals and the unveiling of its report this week underscore how much the Jan. 6 committee dug up and revealed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the lead-up to Jan. 6. Now the ball is in the Justice Department’s court.

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said during Monday’s meeting that he has “every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a road map to justice, and that the agencies and institutions responsible for ensuring justice under the law will use the information we’ve provided to aid in their work.”

After the panel’s meeting, Thompson told CNN that the evidence that supports the panel’s decision to refer Trump to the DOJ is “clear,” adding that he is “convinced” that the department will ultimately charge Trump.

CNN’s Tierney Sneed contributed reporting to this post.