The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol began its last public meeting on Monday afternoon, ending an 18-month investigation as it readies the approval of its final report and a vote on issuing criminal and ethics referrals against former President Donald J. Trump and his top allies.
The hearing opened with Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, providing an overview of the panel’s findings, arguing that Mr. Trump undermined the faith in American democracy.
“Donald Trump broke that faith,” he said. “He lost the 2020 election and knew it. But he chose to try to stay in office through a multipart scheme to overturn the results and block the transfer of power.”
Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman, said Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 were “shameful” as he did nothing for hours as a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol.
“Among the most shameful of this committee’s findings was that President Trump sat in the dining room off the oval watching the violent riot at the capitol on television for hours,” she said. “He would not issue a public statement asking supporters to the, despite urgent pleas from his staff and others to do so.”
Later in the meeting, the panel is expected to vote on referring Mr. Trump to the Justice Department on charges of insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The criminal and ethics referrals against Mr. Trump or others would not carry any legal weight or compel the Justice Department to take any action, but they would send a powerful symbolic message.
The meeting is not expected to be as long as hearings from the summer, which detailed the plot to overturn the 2020 election and featured live witnesses. Those hearings demonstrated how Mr. Trump spread lies about the 2020 election, was involved in a scheme to put forward false electors, and then pressured state officials, the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence to go along with his plans.
The Justice Department is already conducting an investigation, now overseen by a special counsel, into the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the lead up. In recent weeks, federal prosecutors have issued subpoenas to officials in seven states in which the Trump campaign organized electors to falsely certify the election for Mr. Trump despite the voters choosing Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Monday’s meeting will be the end of one of the most consequential congressional committees in a generation. Over a year and a half, the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, obtained more than one million documents, issued more than 100 subpoenas and held 10 public hearings that consistently drew millions of viewers.
