WASHINGTON: Former US President Donald Trump should never be allowed again to run for public office after inciting an insurrection, US lawmakers investigating last year’s assault on the Capitol recommended in their watershed final report.
The suggestion led to a list of proposals from the 845-page document aimed to ensure there is no repeat of the deadly riot Donald Trump is accused of orchestrating in a failed attempt to cling to power after losing the 2020 presidential election.
“Our country has come very far to allow a defeated former president to turn himself into a successful tyrant by fomenting violence and upending our democratic institutions,” chairman of the panel Bennie Thompson said in the introduction of the report, which was released late Thursday.
The report urges lawmakers to legislate so that Trump and others who “engaged in the insurrection” can be banned from holding office — “whether state or federal, military or civilian.”
US report recommends crackdown on extremist groups
Donald Trump has revealed his intentions to run for the president’s post again in 2024.
The report was the culmination of a year and a half of work by the congress investigators who interviewed over 1,000 witnesses to establish the initial cause of the attack, which they accused squarely on Trump.
The committee also suggested a federal crackdown on extremist groups, election law reforms, and the certification of congress’s presidential elections as a “national special security occasion.
It was the final act of the panel before it was dissolved as the House of Representatives switched to Republican control in January.
The Republican party has opposed the probe at every step, and the switch in the power balance raises doubts over the likelihood of most of the suggestions ever being taken up. – AFP/APP
