Criminal Justice & the Rule of Law Democracy & Elections

Evaluating the Jan. 6 Committee’s Evidence

Matt Gluck, Tia Sewell, Benjamin Wittes
Monday, August 29, 2022, 10:03 AM

The committee promised to prove seven key points about the former president’s conduct. How did it do? A summary and evaluation of the committee’s evidence.

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

Editor's Note: This resource offers a detailed summary of the evidence presented by the Jan. 6 Select Committee in its spree of hearings in the summer of 2022. It also evaluates the persuasiveness of the evidence concerning seven distinct points the committee announced it would seek to prove. Our evaluation proceeds in eight distinct sections: (a) an Introduction, in which we give an overview of the committee's efforts and what it promised to prove; (b) evidence that Donald Trump knew he had lost the election and lied about voter fraud allegations; (c) evidence that Trump tried to pressure the Justice Department to spread his allegations of election fraud; (d) evidence that Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes; (d) evidence that Trump tried to convince state lawmakers and election officials to alter election results; (e) evidence that Trump's campaign team directed Republicans in multiple states to produce and officially submit fake electoral slates; (f) evidence that Trump assembled a destructive group of rioters in Washington and sent them to the Capitol; and (g) evidence that during the attack, Trump ignored requests to speak out and failed to act quickly. 

The following is an interactive table of contents:

 


Matt Gluck is a former research fellow at Lawfare. He holds a BA in government from Dartmouth College.
Tia Sewell is a former associate editor of Lawfare. She studied international relations and economics at Stanford University and is now a master’s student in international security at Sciences Po in Paris.
Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.

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