Highlights from the Jan. 6 committee's final report on the Capitol attack

WASHINGTON — The Jan. 6 committee report’s appendix on the intelligence and law enforcement failures ahead of the Jan. 6 attack highlights new information about missed warning signs but stops short of reaching any definitive conclusions or detailed recommendations about what experts have called the worst intelligence failure since Sept. 11.

The appendix includes some new information about just how much intelligence there was pointing to possible violence at and around the Capitol on Jan. 6 and just how poorly coordinated the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the military, U.S. Capitol Police and the Washington, D.C., government were in preparing for it. 

The appendix also states what is widely known: There was a lot of information publicly available that suggested Jan. 6 would be violent, and law enforcement was not prepared for the violence it faced.

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After the 2020 election, a White House official claimed that state legislators could “substitute their judgment for a certified majority of their constituents” in order to prevent socialism, the Jan. 6 committee report says.

Vince Haley, the deputy assistant to the president for policy, strategy and speechwriting, allegedly made the comments to Johnny McEntee, assistant to the president and the director of presidential personnel.

"Election fraud was ‘only one rationale for slating Trump electors,’ Haley told McEntee, and ‘[w]e should baldly assert’ that State legislators ‘have the constitutional right to substitute their judgment for a certified majority of their constituents’ if that prevents socialism," the committee report reads.

The report does not appear to list exactly what was written. A citation suggests it is from emails.

Haley also added that state capitals in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan “do not have to sit idly by and submit themselves to rule by Beijing and Paris,” according to the report.

Claims that Democrats or President Joe Biden are socialists are popular on the political right. Contact information for Haley could not immediately be found late Thursday.

While John Eastman has been singled out as the person who carved out novel and unusual legal theories that would have prevented Biden from becoming president, committee members said in the report that it was actually Kenneth Chesebro who was the architect of a fake elector plot that might have put Trump back in the White House.

“The fake elector plan emerged from a series of legal memoranda written by an outside legal advisor to the Trump campaign: Kenneth Chesebro. Although John Eastman would have a more prominent role in advising President Trump in the days immediately before January 6th, Chesebro … was central to the creation of the plan,” the report says.

The report summarized memos by Chesebro on Nov. 18, Dec. 9 and Dec. 13 that outlined a scheme by which slates of alternate electors in various swing states would gather to cast electoral votes, which “would preserve the Trump campaign’s options” because of the possibility of a subsequent “court decision (or, perhaps, a state legislative determination) … in favor of the Trump-Pence slate of electors.”

“Chesebro’s contemporaneous communications make clear that the goal was having Congress act on the fake electoral votes,” the report’s authors wrote.

As excitement grew inside the White House and among rally organizers for the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse, it grew more apparent that Trump was calling on supporters to march on the Capitol.

After Kimberly Guilfoyle texted with rally organizer Caroline Wren on Dec. 27 about the plans for the rally, “there was a series of calls among the senior White House staff, likely underscoring the seriousness of the White House’s interest in the event,” the report’s authors wrote.

“Within a few days, the White House began to take a more direct role in coordinating the rally at the Ellipse,” they wrote. During that stretch, organizers and White House staff members began to plan for a march to the Capitol by Trump supporters after his speech.

In a text to Wren on Dec. 29, Justin Caporale, a former Trump staffer who was asked to help produce the Ellipse rally, "wrote that after the president’s planned speech there ‘maybe [sic] a call to action to march to the [C]apitol and make noise,’” the report’s authors wrote.

“This is the earliest indication uncovered by the select committee that the president planned to call on his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol,” the report stated. “But it wasn’t the last.”

The report then notes that on Jan. 2, rally organizer Katrina Pierson told Wren that Meadows had said that Trump was going to “call on everyone to march to the [C]apitol.”

Then-President Donald Trump and his campaign raised $250 million between the November 2020 election and Jan. 6, 2021, the Jan. 6 committee said.

The fundraising emails used incendiary — and false — language stating that the election was “rigged” or that donations could help stop people from “trying to steal the election,” according to the report. Most of the $250 million raised was from small-dollar donations, it says.

“Millions of dollars that were raised ostensibly for ‘election defense’ and ‘fighting voter fraud’ were not spent that way at all,” the report says.

Trump created a PAC, called Save America, that allowed him to keep millions and spend it with fewer restrictions, the committee wrote.

“Prior to the formation of Save America, any money raised by the Trump Campaign could effectively only be spent on recount and election-contest related expenses, and to pay off campaign debt,” the committee wrote. “But now the money raised into Save America could allow President Trump to pay for his personal expenses, such as travel or hotel stays.”

In a chilling exchange, the report describes how two Secret Service agents reacted to the mob at the Capitol in the minutes after Trump tweeted his video telling supporters to go home.

The report said that a minute after Trump's tweet went out, one agent told a group of agents that even more people had breached the Capitol. Another replied, "I don’t know how they’re gonna retake the Capitol building back at this point."

Various reports, testimony and documentary footage shot by House Speak Nancy Pelosi's daughter showed a long struggle to send National Guard troops in to help police quell the mob. It would be hours before backup arrived and the crowd eventually dispersed.

The committee alleges that Jared Kushner began closely monitoring the Trump campaign's effort to raise money off lies about the election on Nov. 8 — a day after NBC News and other networks called the 2020 race for Joe Biden.

The panel said it received documents confirming Kushner's involvement.

"Kushner requested that a daily tracker be created showing the Trump Campaign’s financial position from election day forward," the report said. "In an email, Kushner noted that the tracker would allow the Campaign to consider its cash flow ahead of the creation of “a new entity for POTUS[’s] other political activities.”

"Kushner stated that he needed this new daily tracker because the Trump Campaign was going to continue fundraising post-election," the report said.

The new entity was Trump’s new leadership PAC, Save America, which has paid tens of thousands of dollars per month to former Trump aides like Dan Scavino and Nick Luna; a fashion designer with ties to Melania Trump; Trump properties; and the America First Policy Institute, where Mark Meadows is a senior partner. 

Former President Donald Trump wanted 10,000 National Guard members protecting him and his supporters as they marched from the Ellipse to the U.S. Capitol, the report says.

Trump “floated” the idea after advisers tried to talk him out of being “on the ground” with supporters during the events of Jan. 6, citing concern for his safety, the report says. Trump wanted the National Guard to protect them from "any supposed threats by leftwing counter-protesters," according to the report.

A senior adviser, Max Miller, rejected the idea, saying it was unnecessary. In a text to former Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson, he said, “Just glad we killed the national guard and a procession,” the report says.