The Biggest Takeaway from the January 6 Report

Published

3 years ago

January 10, 2023

admin

The congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection delivered a comprehensive and compelling case for the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump and his closest allies for their attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

But the committee zoomed in so tightly on the culpability of Trump and his inner circle that it largely cropped out the dozens of other state and federal Republican officials who supported or enabled the presidents multifaceted, months-long plot. The committee downplayed the involvement of the legion of local Republican officials who enlisted as fake electors and said almost nothing about the dozens of congressional Republicans who supported Trumps effortseven to the point, in one case, of urging him to declare Marshall Law to overturn the result.

With these choices, the committee likely increased the odds that Trump and his allies will face personal accountabilitybut diminished the prospect of a complete reckoning within the GOP.

David Frum: Justice is coming for Donald Trump

That reality points to the larger question lingering over the committees final report: Would convicting Trump defang the threat to democracy that culminated on January 6, or does that require a much broader confrontation with all of the forces in extremist movements, and even the mainstream Republican coalition, that rallied behind Trumps efforts?

If we imagine that preventing another assault on the democratic process is only about preventing the misconduct of a single person, Grant Tudor, a policy advocate at the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, told me, we are probably not setting up ourselves for success.

Both the 154-page executive summary unveiled Monday and the 845-page final report released last night made clear that the committee is focused preponderantly on Trump. The summary in particular read more like a draft criminal indictment than a typical congressional report. It contained breathtaking detail on Trumps efforts to overturn the election and concluded with an extensive legal analysis recommending that the Justice Department indict Trump on four separate offenses, including obstruction of a government proceeding and providing aid and comfort to an insurrection.

Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the former special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment, told me the report showed that the committee members and staff were thinking like prosecutors. The reports structure, he said, made clear that for the committee, criminal referrals for Trump and his closest allies were the endpoint that all of the hearings were building toward. I think they believe that its important not to dilute the narrative, he said. The utmost imperative is to have some actual consequences and to tell a story to the American people. Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney who has closely followed the investigation, agreed that the report underscored the committees prioritization of a single goal: making the case that the Justice Department should prosecute Trump and some of the people around him.

If they wind up with Trump facing charges, I think they will see it as a victory, Litman told me. My sense is they are also a little suspicious about the [Justice] Department; they think its overly conservative or wussy and if they served up too big an agenda to them, it might have been rejected. The real focus was on Trump.

In one sense, the committees single-minded focus on Trump has already recorded a significant though largely unrecognized achievement. Although theres no exact parallel to what the Justice Department now faces, in scandals during previous decades, many people thought it would be too divisive and turbulent for one administration to look back with criminal proceedings against a former administrations officials. President Gerald Ford raised that argument when he pardoned his disgraced predecessor Richard Nixon, who had resigned while facing impeachment over the Watergate scandal, in 1974. Barack Obama made a similar case in 2009 when he opted against prosecuting officials from the George W. Bush administration for the torture of alleged terrorists. (Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past, Obama said at the time.)

As Tudor pointed out, it is a measure of the committees impact that virtually no political or opinion leaders outside of hard-core Trump allies are making such arguments against looking back. If anything, the opposite argumentthat the real risk to U.S. society would come from not holding Trump accountableis much more common.

There are very few folks in elite opinion-making who are not advocating for accountability in some form, and that was not a given two years ago, Tudor told me.

Yet Tudor is one of several experts I spoke with who expressed ambivalence about the committees choice to focus so tightly on Trump while downplaying the role of other Republicans, either in the states or in Congress. I think its an important lost opportunity, he said, that could narrow the publics understanding as to the totality of what happened and, in some respects, to risk trivializing it.

Read: The January 6 committees most damning revelation yet

Bill Kristol, the longtime conservative strategist turned staunch Trump critic, similarly told me that although he believes the committee was mostly correct to focus its limited time and resources primarily on Trumps role, the report doesnt quite convey how much the antidemocratic, authoritarian sentiments have metastasized across the GOP.

Perhaps the most surprising element of the executive summary was its treatment of the dozens of state Republicans who signed on as fake electors, who Trump hoped could supplant the actual electors pledged to Joe Biden in the decisive states. The committee suggested that the fake electorssome of whom face federal and state investigations for their actionswere largely duped by Trump and his allies. Multiple Republicans who were persuaded to sign the fake certificates also testified that they felt misled or betrayed, and would not have done so had they known that the fake votes would be used on January 6th without an intervening court ruling, the committee wrote. Likewise, the report portrays Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, who agreed to help organize the fake electors, as more of a victim than an ally in the effort. The full report does note that some officials eagerly assisted President Trump with his plans, but it identifies only one by name: Doug Mastriano, the GOP state senator and losing Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate this year. Even more than the executive summary, the full report emphasizes testimony from the fake electors in which they claimed to harbor doubts and concerns about the scheme.

Eisen, a co-author of a recent Brookings Institution report on the fake electors, told me that the committee seemed to go out of their way to give the fake electors the benefit of the doubt. Some of them may have been misled, he said, and in other cases, its not clear whether their actions cross the standard for criminal liability. But, Eisen said, if you ask me do I think these fake electors knew exactly what was going on, I believe a bunch of them did. When the fake electors met in Georgia, for instance, Eisen said that they already knew Trump had not won the state, it was clear he had not won in court and had no prospect of winning in court, they were invited to the gathering of the fake electors in secrecy, and they knew that the governor had not and would not sign these fake electoral certificates. Its hard to view the participants in such a process as innocent dupes.

The executive summary and final report both said very little about the role of other members of Congress in Trumps drive to overturn the election. The committee did recommend Ethics Committee investigations of four House Republicans who had defied its subpoenas (including GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the presumptive incoming speaker). And it identifie GOP Representative Jim Jordan, the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, as a significant player in President Trumps efforts while also citing the sustained involvement of Representatives Scott Perry and Andy Biggs.

But neither the executive summary nor the full report chose quoted exchanges involving House and Senate Republicans in the trove of texts the committee obtained from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The website Talking Points Memo, quoting from those texts, recently reported that 34 congressional Republicans exchanged ideas with Meadows on how to overturn the election, including the suggestion from Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina that Trump simply declare Marshall Law to remain in power. Even Representative Adam Schiff of California, a member of the committee, acknowledged in an op-ed published today that the report devoted scant attention …[to] the willingness of so many members of Congress to vote to overturn it.

Nor did the committee recommend disciplinary action against the House members who strategized with Meadows or Trump about overturning the resultalthough it did say that such members should be questioned in a public forum about their advance knowledge of and role in President Trumps plan to prevent the peaceful transition of power. (While one of the committees concluding recommendations was that lawyers who participated in the efforts to overturn the election face disciplinary action, the report is silent on whether that same standard should apply to members of Congress.) In that, the committee stopped short of the call from a bipartisan group of former House members for discipline (potentially to the point of expulsion) against any participants in Trumps plot. Surely, taking part in an effort to overturn an election warrants an institutional response; previous colleagues have been investigated and disciplined for far less, the group wrote.

By any measure, experts agree, the January 6 committee has provided a model of tenacity in investigation and creativity in presentation. The record it has compiled offers both a powerful testament for history and a spur to immediate action by the Justice Department. It has buried, under a mountain of evidence, the Trump apologists who tried to whitewash the riot as a normal tourist visit or minimize the former presidents responsibility for it. In all of these ways, the committee has made it more difficult for Trump to obscure how gravely he abused the power of the presidency as he begins his campaign to re-obtain it. As Tudor said, Its pretty hard to imagine January 6 would still be headline news day in and day out absent the committees work.

But Trump could not have mounted such a threat to American democracy alone. Thousands of far-right extremists responded to his call to assemble in Washington. Seventeen Republican state attorneys general signed on to a lawsuit to invalidate the election results in key states; 139 Republican House members and eight GOP senators voted to reject the outcome even after the riot on January 6. Nearly three dozen congressional Republicans exchanged ideas with Meadows on how to overturn the result, or exhorted him to do so. Dozens of prominent Republicans across the key battleground states signed on as fake electors. Nearly 300 Republicans who echoed Trumps lies about the 2020 election were nominated in Novembermore than half of all GOP candidates, according to The Washington Post. And although many of the highest-profile election deniers were defeated, about 170 deniers won their campaign and now hold office, where they could be in position to threaten the integrity of future elections.

From the November 2022 issue: Bad losers

The January 6 committees dogged investigation has stripped Trumps defenses and revealed the full magnitude of his assault on democracy. But whatever happens next to Trump, it would be naive to assume that the committee has extinguished, or even fully mapped, a threat that has now spread far beyond him.

Politics

Watchdog criticises ‘unprecedented’ government offer to delay local elections – as five councils confirm requests for postponement

Published

2 hours ago

December 19, 2025

admin

Watchdog criticises 'unprecedented' government offer to delay local elections – as five councils confirm requests for postponement

The elections watchdog has criticised the government for offering to consider delaying 63 local council elections next year – as five authorities confirmed to Sky News that they would ask for a postponement.

On Thursday, hours before parliament began its Christmas recess, the government revealed that councils were being sent a letter asking if they thought elections should be delayed in their areas due to challenges around delivering local government reorganisation plans.

The chief executive of the Electoral Commission, Vijay Rangarajan, hit out at the announcement on Friday, saying he was “concerned” that some elections could be postponed, with some having already been deferred from 2025.

“We are disappointed by both the timing and substance of the statement. Scheduled elections should, as a rule, go ahead as planned, and only be postponed in exceptional circumstances,” he said in a statement.

“Decisions on any postponements will not be taken until mid-January, less than three months before the scheduled May 2026 elections are due to begin.

“This uncertainty is unprecedented and will not help campaigners and administrators who need time to prepare for their important roles.”

Mr Rangarajan added: “We very much recognise the pressures on local government, but these late changes do not help administrators. Parties and candidates have already been preparing for some time, and will be understandably concerned.”

He said “capacity constraints” were not a “legitimate reason for delaying long planned elections”, which risked “affecting the legitimacy of local decision-making and damaging public confidence”.

The watchdog chief also said there was “a clear conflict of interest in asking existing councils to decide how long it will be before they are answerable to voters”.

Sky News contacted the 63 councils that have been sent the letter about potentially delaying their elections.

At the time of publication, 17 authorities had replied with their decisions, while 33 said they would make up their minds before the government’s deadline of 15 January.

Many councils told Sky News they were surprised at yesterday’s announcement, saying that they had been fully intending to hold their polls as scheduled.

They said they were now working to understand the appropriate democratic mechanism for deciding whether to request a postponement of elections. Some local authorities believe it should be a decision made by their full council, while others will leave it up to council leaders or cabinet members to decide.

Multiple councils also emphasised in statements to Sky News that the ultimate decision to delay elections lay with the government.

Reform UK has threatened legal action against ministers, accusing Labour and the Tories of “colluding” to postpone elections in order to lock other parties out of power – a sentiment echoed by Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey.

But shadow local government secretary Sir James Cleverly told Sky News this morning that the Conservative Party “wants these elections to go ahead”. Sky News understands that the national party is making that position clear to local leaders.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government, said it was taking a “locally-led approach”, and emphasised that “councils are in the best position to judge the impact of postponements on their area”.

They added: “These are exceptional circumstances where councils have told us they’re struggling to prepare for resource-intensive elections to councils that will shortly be abolished, while also reorganising into more efficient authorities that can better serve local residents.

“There is a clear precedent for postponing local elections where local government reorganisation is in progress, as happened in 2019 and 2022.”

The five councils that confirmed they would be seeking postponements were:

Blackburn with Darwen Council (Labour);
Chorley Borough Council (Labour);
East Sussex County Council (Conservative minority);
Hastings Borough Council (Green minority);
West Sussex County Council (Conservative).

The councils in Chorley, and East and West Sussex, had decided prior to Thursday’s government announcement that they would request a delay.

An East Sussex County Council spokesperson told Sky News: “It is welcome that the government is listening to local leaders and has heard the case for focussing our resources on delivery in East Sussex, particularly with devolution and reorganisation of local government, as well as delivering services to residents, such high priorities.”

They also pointed to the cost of electing councillors for a term of just one year, and argued that it would be “more prudent for just one set of elections to be held in 2027”.

West Sussex County Council echoed those reasons and said it would cost taxpayers across the county £9m to hold elections in 2026, 2027, and 2028, as currently planned.

Chorley and Blackburn councils also cited the cost of delivering elections, and said they would prefer that money be spent on delivering the local government reorganisation and delivering services to local residents.

Meanwhile, 12 councils confirmed to Sky News that they would not be requesting delays:

Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council (Liberal Democrat-Independents);
Broxbourne Borough Council (Conservative);
Colchester City Council (Labour-Liberal Democrat);
Eastleigh Borough Council (Liberal Democrat);
Essex County Council (Conservative);
Hart District Council (Liberal Democrat-Community Campaign);
Hastings Borough Council (Green minority);
Isle of Wight Council (no overall control);
Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council (Conservative);
Portsmouth City Council (Liberal Democrat minority);
Rushmoor Borough Council (Labour minority);
Southampton City Council (Labour).

Environment

Toyota propagandizes its employees with video games to lobby for more pollution

Published

3 hours ago

December 19, 2025

admin

Toyota propagandizes its employees with video games to lobby for more pollution

Toyota’s latest move in its work to harm the environment involves an internal platform where it uses video games to spread propaganda among its North American employees, enticing them with prizes to join lobbying efforts to loosen environmental rules around the automotive industry.

We’ve covered Toyota’s anti-environment lobbying efforts many times before.

For an inexhaustive list of how Toyota lobbies to harm the environment, the company:

Now, an excellent report by the Guardian details how Toyota uses internal communications to encourage its employees to join its propaganda efforts, with anti-EV and anti-environment propaganda in the form of video games where employees can earn points and prizes.

Advertisement – scroll for more content

Toyota calls the platform “Toyota Policy Drivers,” and it’s available to some 10,000 employees across North America. The games were created by LGND, a software firm that has also made projects for defense contractors Aurex and Bechtel.

A video showing the website participation process and the biased language used. Source: LGND

It consists of several videos telling Toyota’s side of the story – like Toyota’s insistence that hybrids pollute less than EVs, which is incorrect – and links to participate by reaching out to public representatives.

But that’s just normal corporate propaganda stuff. What’s different about Toyota’s platform is the gamification of the process, encouraging employees to earn points and play video games while digesting this propaganda.

Video games used as anti-environment propaganda

Games include Monster Mansion, Adventure Quest, Star Quest, and Dragon Quest (no, not the long-running and popular RPG – we wonder if trademark authorities might be interested in that one).

Screenshots from “Star Quest” and “Dragon Quest.” Source: Toyota Policy Drivers, via The Guardian

Toyota cycles games in and out each year, but each has a similar goal of showing propaganda videos in exchange for points. The videos were publicly visible until this morning. After the Guardian published its article, Toyota password protected them.

Playing the “games” can earn you points, which can be redeemed for stickers and t-shirts, or even trips. One employee says he earned cupcakes and a trip to Washington, DC.

Adam Zuckerman of Public Citizen had harsh words for the program, which he called “dystopian” and said “treats employees like children.” Specifically referring to Stephen Ciccone, Toyota’s VP of public affairs for North America, Zuckerman said:

It’s fitting that Ciccone calls himself a wartime consigliere because he has gone to war against the standards that protect our communities and the air that we breathe. Like the mafiosos that he fashions himself after, he is pressuring his own workers into doing his bidding against the common good. Ciccone should quit cosplaying mafia, end his dystopian game of poisoning our air, and stop blocking the green vehicles of the future.

Toyota’s actions and its public image diverge

Toyota’s propaganda contradicts its long-held public image. For decades now, Toyota has been considered by the public as one of the more environmentally-friendly automakers, first starting with its small cars in the 70s and later due to the Prius, the vehicle that is known for popularizing the conventional gas hybrid powertrain. In the early 2000s, the Prius was among the most efficient vehicles available.

However, the Prius is no longer particularly efficient comparatively. Just about any electric car is significantly more efficient than a Prius – even the ridiculous Hummer EV roughly matches the Prius in energy efficiency at 53mpge vs. 57mpg. Also, conventional hybrids get 100% of their energy from fossil fuels, and are thus inherently incompatible with climate solutions.

Despite Toyota’s false claims that gas-powered hybrids are the answer to reducing emissions, its own numbers show that its emissions have steadily increased over the years. And its average US fleet mpg is consistently middling-to-poor, according to the EPA’s automotive trends report.

When Toyota owners are educated about Toyota’s opposition to environmental policy, it results in a 32% reduction in favorability for the brand. A large majority of Toyota owners want the company to support stronger environmental policy.

Similarly, a recent appearance of Toyota’s chairman, Akio Toyoda, decked out in US campaign gear supporting Donald Trump helped many in the public to recognize Toyota’s friendliness with anti-environment actors. As former CEO, Toyoda was largely responsible for the company’s current failure to adopt electric vehicles.

But Toyota has dug in its feet in defending hybrid vehicles, which it considers its own territory, whereas electric vehicles are the territory of other brands. So it twists itself into knots trying to defend more-polluting vehicles, despite the harm that they cause to everyone who lives on Earth – yes, including Toyota employees, who breathe the same air and live in the same disrupted climate as the rest of us.

Toyota laughably claims this corporate-led effort is “grassroots”

While Toyota says that employees don’t have to participate, the combination of incentives and implicit pressure from higher-ups means that employees who would not have otherwise lobbied against the public interest would then be encouraged to do so.

It calls the effort “grassroots advocacy,” even though it is being coordinated and pushed upon employees of a one of the largest corporate entities on the planet (that’s not what “grassroots” means…). It also allows employees to participate during working hours, indicating that it sees these videogames as a work activity, rather than natural grassroots advocacy.

Indeed, the company brags about what it sees as the success of the program, taking credit for various harmful policy changes, like republicans’ illegal attempt to force dirty air on 12 US states. Toyota also used the platform to oppose EPA exhaust rules that would save Americans $100 billion in fuel costs, wrongly calling it an “EV mandate,” despite that the Biden rule is actually technology neutral (which Toyota claims to support, even though it opposed a technology neutral measure in practice).

Perhaps now, with the knowledge of yet another way that Toyota spreads anti-environment propaganda, some of the environmental sheen of this company can start to tarnish in the public eye.

The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.

Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.

Add Electrek as a preferred source on Google

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Environment

Podcast: We bought 2 new EVs, Tesla Robotaxi, Ford’s $19B EV charge, and more

Published

3 hours ago

December 19, 2025

admin

Podcast: We bought 2 new EVs, Tesla Robotaxi, Ford's B EV charge, and more

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Seth and me (Fred) each buying a new EV, Tesla Robotaxi progress, Ford’s $19 billion charge on EVs, and much more.

The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.

As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.

After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:

Advertisement – scroll for more content

We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.

Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:

Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:

[embedded content]