‘Trump should never hold office again’

Washington: Donald Trump should never be allowed to run for public office again after inciting an insurrection, lawmakers investigating last year´s assault on the US Capitol concluded in their watershed final report.

The recommendation led a list of proposals from the 845-page document aimed at ensuring there is no repeat of the deadly riot the ex-president is accused of orchestrating in a failed bid to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.

“Our country has come too far to allow a defeated president to turn himself into a successful tyrant by upending our democratic institutions (and) fomenting violence,” the panel´s chairman Bennie Thompson said in an introduction to the report, released late Thursday.

The document urges lawmakers to legislate so that Trump and others who “engaged in insurrection” can be barred from holding office -- “whether federal or state, civilian or military.” It was the culmination of 18 months of work by congressional investigators who interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses to establish the primary cause of the attack, which they blamed squarely on the Republican billionaire.

The committee also recommended reforms of election law, a federal crackdown on extremist groups and the designation of Congress´s certification of presidential elections as a “national special security event” on a par with the annual State of the Union address. It was the panel´s final act before it is disbanded as the House of Representatives switches to Republican control in January.