The report was prepared by a parliamentary committee after an 18-month investigation, interviews of more than 1,000 witnesses and the examination of more than one million pages of documents. The report is 845 pages long. The British newspaper The Guardian talks about one of the most damning portraits of an American president in the history of the country.
Meat on the bones
According to Kenneth Manusama, an international law lawyer and America expert, the report mainly gives more meat on the bones. “There are more witness statements and this is more fodder for the Justice Ministry to investigate further.”
The political damage to Trump can also be great, Manusama thinks. This could be a new argument for Republicans to distance themselves from Trump. But we must also see it in the light of the recent primaries and relations within the Republican party’. For example, Ron DeSantis, Trump’s main opponent and also the governor of Florida, could also use this report. “But more and more people are tired of Trump.”
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One of the report’s recommendations is that security around the election needs to be improved. And the people who participated in the assault are no longer allowed to work in government service. Whether that will be successful is the question, thinks Manusama. The problem for Democrats is that Republicans will soon have a majority in the House of Representatives. Proposals for greater security will have to come from here. And within the Republican party, the blame for the assault is more likely to be placed on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is from the Democratic party. It will be a difficult road, also because the Republicans do not want to collaborate with the Democrats’.
According to The Washington Post newspaper, there is little chance of anything happening with the recommendations, since Republicans now have a majority in the House of Representatives. Furthermore, the committee is dissolved because four of the nine members have not been re-elected. The possibility that Trump will actually be banned from public office seems unlikely, since he still has a lot of power within the Republican Party.
Trial for Trump
It remains to be seen whether the trial against Donald Trump will now also start. Now we have to wait for what Merrick Garland, the Secretary of Justice, will do with the report. According to Manusama, Garland is a careful person. He pretty much does everything by the rules. And the ministry has actually always kept a certain distance from this investigation, only now all the evidence is actually being examined. On the other hand, public pressure is increasing, so a decision will be made relatively quickly.’ According to Manusama, it will be before the summer of 2023.