Jan. 6 committee delays report release, not expected until tomorrow

The Jan. 6 committee announced shortly before 4 p.m. ET that it now expects its final report to be released tomorrow. It's "possible" some additional records will still be released today, the panel said.

So what happened?

As NBC News' Ali Vitali reported on MSNBC minutes ago:

"One of the explanations that we've been given potentially is that this could just be the effect of the printer printing. That may be a difficult reason to accept or explain but that could be one of the reasons. ... Look, this is a report that they were writing up until the minute they had to stop writing and send it to the government printer in the first place."

It very well may be as simple as a printer issue. Who among us hasn't had a frustrating episode caused by a printer delay? The report's summary is more than 150 pages, so surely the full report has many, many pages to print.

It's also hard not to look at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's high-profile visit to Washington today and his speech scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET and wonder whether that could have affected the committee's timeline.

Well, House Republicans managed to get their “counter-report” out the door today while the Jan. 6 committee didn’t. In most situations, that would count as a tactical win. It would mean that evening news, headlines, the Online Discourse — all would have more bandwidth to focus on the contents of the GOP’s release.

Except this is a wildly crowded news cycle, especially considering the holidays. Instead of getting a clear lane, there’s still Zelenskyy’s visit and the looming passage of an omnibus spending bill to keep Washington reporters occupied.

And let’s be real: Fox News’ prime-time coverage was going to focus on the GOP report versus a deep dive on the Jan. 6 committee report anyway, so I’d call this one a wash.

Republicans have just released their own report, designed as a response to the House Jan. 6 report, and it’s focused on one thing: security failures at the U.S. Capitol on the day of the riot.

Some expert observers say that some of the information gathered in the report is new and should help shed light on the massive security failures that took place that day. And based on early impressions, the report appears to refrain from the most far-fetched, evidence-free conspiracy theories about antifa or the FBI covertly engineering the insurrection. 

But it’s also clearly a partisan exercise that intends to cast the majority of the blame on Democrats, rather than Donald Trump, for the events that day. It takes aim at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, even though the security of the Capitol was not her responsibility. It talks about security as inadequate in part because of “optics” concerns tied to the Black Lives Matter protests. And it scrubs Trump’s encouragement of a violent mob from the timeline of Jan. 6 — such as his encouragement of the mob to “fight like hell” — and instead depicts him as calling for a “peaceful” protest.

The clear partisan agenda is a shame because it undermines the credibility of a report that could serve a genuinely useful purpose. There were huge security failures that day, as a bipartisan Senate report documented earlier this year. We need to know more about them without an agenda of partisan point-scoring tainting the analysis.

Good news for those who want the anticipation to keep building: The Jan. 6 committee is no longer planning to release its full report today, NBC News' Ali Vitali confirmed on MSNBC moments ago.

The committee is now expecting the report to be released tomorrow.

Stay tuned!

One of the most shocking moments of testimony before the committee this summer came when former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said former White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato had told her that Trump had cursed at a Secret Service agent on Jan. 6 when the agent refused to take him to the Capitol in a presidential SUV. The most jarring detail, according to Hutchinson, was that Ornato had said Trump had lunged at the steering wheel in a fit of desperation.

The committee’s executive summary of its final report, which was released Monday, has said that it has confirmed the story of a “furious interaction” with several sources, and also indicated that Ornato’s claims to the committee that he doesn’t recall any such interaction lack credibility. Now, with the release of the final report, new details and transcripts might provide insight into why they think that’s the case and help bolster one of the most damning pieces of testimony from the hearings.

More evidence of Trump being irate over not being able to travel to the Capitol will only make his aspirations to lead the insurrection even clearer.

With the final meeting wrapped and the full report due for release later today, the members of the Jan. 6 committee have just a few other official duties to take care of (including a visit from Ukraine’s president and a vote on a federal spending bill) before the 117th Congress comes to an end. Here’s what each of the members will likely be up to when the new Congress starts in January.

Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.: Thompson will likely remain on the Homeland Security Committee, where he’s currently chair, as ranking member.

Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.: Lofgren will no longer hold the gavel on the House Administration Committee, but is looking to become the ranking member of the Science, Space and Technology Committee in the new year.

Pete Aguilar, D-Calif.: A rising star in the party, Aguilar was recently elected to join the House Democratic Caucus’ leadership. He’ll be serving as House Democratic Caucus Chair, replacing Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who will be the new party leader.

Adam Schiff, D-Calif.: Schiff had considered trying to become leader of the House Democrats but waved off in the face of Jeffries’ rise. Instead, he’s eyeing a Senate run in 2024 — and will most likely see Republicans block him being ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee.

Jamie Raskin, D-Md.: Raskin, a breakout figure in both the Jan. 6 committee’s work and Trump’s second impeachment, is set to leapfrog seniority and become ranking member on the House Oversight Committee.

Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla.: This will be Murphy’s last term in Congress. She announced last December that she would not run for re-election after serving for six years.

Elaine Luria, D-Va.: Luria, a Navy veteran, lost a close race to serve a third term, falling to Republican Jen Kiggans in this year’s midterms. She was one of the few Democrats to highlight Jan. 6 in her campaign, declaring in her closing TV ad: “If standing up for what’s right means losing an election, so be it.”

Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.: A target was on Cheney’s back since she was one of 10 Republicans (including fellow committee member Adam Kinzinger) to vote for impeaching Trump after the Jan. 6 attack. She lost her primary bid in August but could have big plans for the next few years as an anti-Trump voice in the GOP.

Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.: Kinzinger chose not to run in 2022 after his district was merged with another Republican’s last year. He’s still sorting through what he could do moving forward. The Chicago Sun-Times interviewed him recently: “He’s not that interested in lobbying. Perhaps a TV gig. ‘I enjoy TV because I think it’s a way to be able to stay kind of out there.' Maybe a mix. Maybe something in academia, corporate boards, TV and perhaps even paid speaking engagements.”

The Jan. 6 committee’s report is only going to strengthen the lawsuit filed by the NAACP and several lawmakers against Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers extremist groups. 

In February 2021, before the committee was formed, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and the NAACP filed a federal lawsuit against that band of anti-democratic misfits for their roles in the violent Capitol riot on Jan. 6. 

The lawsuit cites the Ku Klux Klan Act, a post-Civil War law that prohibits using violence and intimidation to deny civil rights and prevent the enforcement of U.S. laws. (The law was meant to protect emancipated Black people and the officials who passed laws empowering them.) 

Several other lawmakers have since joined the lawsuit, though Thompson withdrew from the suit shortly after he was named chair of the committee, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. 

The committee’s executive summary points to Trump’s culpability in fomenting insurrection on Jan. 6, and it highlights his refusal to do anything to stop the carnage as his supporters tried to stop the certification of Trump’s 2020 election loss. 

That’s why the committee ultimately referred Trump for multiple criminal charges, including inciting or assisting those in an insurrection and obstruction of an official proceeding.

The full report will only provide more detail to support those findings. That and the committee’s referrals only boost the KKK Act suit against Trump and others in his orbit who acquiesced to his fascistic wishes.

It’s fitting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington today coincides with the Jan. 6 committee’s full report release.   

Both remind us of attacks on democracy — the Russian attack against which Zelenskyy is fighting and the Trumpian attack on American democracy laid out by the committee.

Indeed, recall that Trump’s first impeachment centered on his 2019 attempt to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democrat Joe Biden, who would go on to defeat Trump in 2020. On the other end of that apparent quid pro quo, of course, was an invitation to Washington and military aid for Ukraine. Today, Zelenskyy will visit the Capitol that Trump supporters attacked on Jan. 6, 2021.

Things have come full circle, in a sense, with Biden having defeated Russia’s preferred candidate in 2020, putting the president in a position to help deliver aid for Ukraine.

Ahead of today’s release of the Jan. 6 report, we have exclusive NBC News reporting shedding further light on law enforcement failures surrounding the attack on the Capitol and the committee’s failure, thus far, to call out those failures.

NBC’s Ryan Reilly reports today:

“On Dec. 19, 2020, the day that then-President Donald Trump sent a tweet summoning his supporters to a ‘wild’ protest in the nation’s capital on Jan. 6, one of the FBI’s own confidential sources warned the bureau that the far-right considered Trump’s message ‘a call to arms,’ according to an email reviewed by NBC News.

“That tip to the FBI, from a source who is still used by the bureau and spoke on the condition of anonymity, warned there was a ‘big’ threat of violence on Jan. 6. It was among hundreds of pages of reports viewed by NBC News that this source sent to the FBI in the weeks before the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. The email, which has not been previously reported, warned that the Trump tweet was ‘gaining hold’ on social media.”

This new reporting adds to the questions surrounding law enforcement’s response and, in turn, the committee’s delicate treatment of that response. According to NBC News, when the source learned the committee had avoided criticizing law enforcement in its final summary, the source’s reaction was: “What the f---?”

Hopefully, the committee’s full report will help to answer that question.